The Jazz Singer

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Dave B For the time, it was a decent movie with an ending that rocked and introduced a song that was played at July 4th gatherings for years after, including major gatherings such as the NYC seaport. It's hard to minimize that kind of impact. Like many movies of the period, including Fame, Flash Dance, Rocky, it was about dreams coming true on a very public level, and, at the time, it seemed to work. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 05/31/23 Full Review Stephen C LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/18/23 Full Review brent t Listening to soundtrack today and recalling the movie. So looked up and saw that idiots at RT panned this... and summarized Sir Laurence Olivier as being campy here. Not a 5***** movie... sure. But really good. And Neil Diamond perfectly played the part. It's a musical... and the music is moving, well written and classic Neil Diamond (entertaining). Mostly... an uplifting movie. Something critics and Hollywood disdains. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member The Jazz Singer isn't even accurate because Yussel/Jess (Neil Diamond) doesn't perform jazz music, but rather rock music just like what Neil Diamond does in real life. Bad acting from Neil Diamond who is very flat and wooden, Laurence Olivier was some kind of weird caricature of a Jewish cantor, and Catlin Adams was just cheesy. The writing was pretty lazy because characters change personalities and no character arcs occur whatsoever. To top it all off, The Jazz Singer featured blackface like the 1927 version but the practice had already been deemed racist around 1980. Come on now. The 1980 version of The Jazz Singer completely ruins the charm of the original 1927 classic by nearly removing what made the old 20's film so important to cinema history, by making it full voiced with sound as oppose to half of it being silent and the other half being fully voiced with synced sound, and having the Jazz music be replaced with Rock music, which is just unnecessarily modernizing the film to be more accepting of the 80s, which is just horrible and disrespectful to the legacy of Alan Crossland and his work. This film right here is why people usually hate remakes because it messes with the original in a very poor manner. Rated 1/5 Stars •  Rated 1 out of 5 stars 02/18/23 Full Review john f So good. I hadn't seen it in a while and it's still so awesome. Must see. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review robert p An honest attempt by Neil Diamond to make a movie, the music is wonderful but not the acting. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Read all reviews

The Jazz Singer

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