(Center L-R) Steven Schirripa, John Lloyd Young and Christopher Walken (Warner Bros.)

Clint Eastwood’s adaptation of Jersey Boys, the Tony-award winning Broadway musical, ends with a production number that has the color and frenetic energy of, well, a Tony-award winning Broadway musical. If only Eastwood had used that template for the rest of the movie. Eastwood’s Jersey Boys is what you get when a filmmaker applies the Goodfellas formula – a nostalgic crime drama with a swaggering narrator and wandering camera—to a classic 1960s vocal group. The uneasy junction of crime and the music industry could have been the subject of a riveting entertainment, but Eastwood unsuccessfully slathers this Top 40 biopic with a generally listless drama that doesn’t let up until it’s too late.

A story of mobbed-up music, Jersey Boys sinks as if it had concrete blocks tied to its windpipes. Cinematographer Tom Stern, who has been Eastwood’s D.P. of choice since Mystic River, shoots most of the film in a washed-out palette that is an easy shortcut for Nostalgia—compare with Bruno Delbonnel’s beautifully muted photography in the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewellyn Davis, and you see what a pop period piece should look like.

This bleached haze eventually lets in some color, but the film’s look is not helped by mostly colorless performances, both acting and vocal. John Lloyd Young won a Tony for his performance in Jersey Boys on Broadway, but if he a charismatic stage presence, it doesn’t show on film. His pipes aren’t much better – compare how he breaks up the opening line of “Sherry” with Valli’s smooth phrasing. The actors sing their parts themselves and they’re not bad, but they’re not a convincing Top 40 success. Young fares better in dramatic scenes, which means the fault must lie with Eastwood, who doesn’t get consistent performances out of his cast.

The characters come off as little more than stereotypes, from the Italian-Americans in the band to the outrageously swishy music impresario Bob Crewe (Mike Doyle), who produced the Four Seasons’ biggest hits. The cast shares narration duties, but the lead narration comes from Tony DeVito (Boardwalk Empire’s Vincent Piazza), the volatile aspiring singer who hears something in Valli’s voice and takes him under his wing not just as a musician but as a Jersey thug. One of the running plot lines early in the film is the revolving door of various band members as they’re sent off to jail for various offenses that put the band on hold for a few months here and there.

Christopher Walken co-stars as Gyp DeCarlo, a mob guy with a soft spot for Valli, who promises to get him out of any jam just because his version of “My Mother’s Eyes” moves him to tears. If this sounds like another stereotype, it is, and Walken has recently fallen into roles that simply play off his reputation. But he’s one of the few actors here with the presence to pull off his role and give his given stereotype some weight.

Eastwood doesn’t manage to convey the excitement of the Four Season’s rise to fame, but as internal tension tear the band apart, he gets a better handle on his actors. Still, the movie’s more than two-hour running time doesn’t really land a scene until the very end and by then it’s too late, the audience itching to get home and listen to actual Four Seasons recordings.

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Jersey Boys
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Written by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice
With Vincent Piazza, John Lloyd Young, Christopher Walken
Rated R for language throughout
Running time 134 minutes
Opens today at a multiplex near you