Good Morning Lovelies, 

Sometimes I like to keep my thoughts about a film to myself. I like to cherish the emotions it has made me feel and explain them in person. A weird quirk of mine shall we say. When I first saw A Star Is Born, I did just this. I kept my thoughts to myself, only speaking them when asked by someone what I thought of it. To me, it is like a process.

I don’t know if it was because so many had told me how good the film was, how much I had to see it or if I just didn’t take it in fully the first time around, but I didn’t have that earth-shattering experience many did. I decided to wait until it came out to have my full say, as I wanted to see if my mind changed upon a second viewing and gladly it did.

The third outing for this musical feels like a fresh story all over again. Unlike the Judy Garland or Barbara Streisand features, Bradley Cooper has made sure that those who didn’t believe he could make a film like this are proved wrong from the start. Playing Jackson Maine, alongside Lady Gaga’s Ally, Cooper embodies a fragile singer, who meets and falls in love with the waitress and singer. As the two’s relationship develops and Ally’s light begins to grow in the world of fame, Jackson’s troubles overcome him, until it is the pairs love that is saving them both.

From the moment the picture starts, you know that this is not going to be a film that will be all singing and all dancing. Jackson is a character who brings a whole host of foreshadowing with him. In a clever shot by Cooper within the first five minutes, his past and future meet with his character unable to look out the window when passing a sign focused on male suicide. As the camera closes in on both, Cooper has made sure that audiences don’t lose themselves too much in the music.


With two very different stars taking on the lead role, it would be easy to admit that many of us weren’t sure how they would come together. However, Lady Gaga has reinvented herself in this role. Already an award-winning actress - from her time in American Horror Story – she has now cemented herself as a leading star of the big screen. It is like you are watching the real Lady Gaga, the person who she is at home instead of on stage.

Every confession of being knocked back or looked down upon feels like she is speaking about experiences she has had and as a viewer, you feel it. Her characters caring nature towards Cooper’s Jackson shows how both have stripped back everything we have seen them do before and instead they are just being vulnerable for us all. Laying out what the industry fails to show behind the glitz and the glam. An act reflected in the supporting casts on-screen moments, with Sam Elliott’s Bobby, trying to help his brother, even when he knows he can’t and the comfort he is able to provide at the end to Ally.

There are moments where the script does slide off course. Most of which around the rise of Ally’s pop career and the relationships both Jackson and she have with her manager Rez (Rafi Gavron). A character who falls too much into the predictable dislikeable figure many can guess will cause trouble. Yet, the music is always there to make these moments bearable again.

Before the film had even come out the songs were being sung. The words, the chords and the feelings generated when the first twang of Swallow or the heart-wrenching I’ll Never Love Again are played lead to goosebumps and tears upon each viewing. Lady Gaga gets her Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard song with the last feature and you feel every emotion in her voice as it plays out live.

Whilst many will miss the film as a soppy story or another remake, A Star is Born has changed the world of musicals again. It is proof that a classic can be reborn and given a new lick of paint in a way that will open every pore, vessel and membrane of human emotion to do so. All of which has led to this star rating of…