Synopsis
Jess Robin dreams of a career in popular music, but his father, Cantor Rabinovitch, forbids it, insisting Jess live as a traditional Jew and inherit his position at the synagogue. With the help of friend and professional musician Bubba, Jess gets a chance to go to Los Angeles and have famous singer Keith Lennox record one of his songs. Defying both his father and his wife, Jess leaves New York to pursue his dreams.
Votre Filmothèque
Cast
- Neil DiamondJess Robin / Yussel Rabinovitch
- Laurence OlivierCantor Rabinovitch
- Lucie ArnazMolly Bell
- Catlin AdamsRivka Rabinovitch
- Franklyn AjayeBubba
- Paul NicholasKeith Lennox
- Sully BoyarEddie Gibbs
- Mike KellinLeo
- James BoothPaul Rossini
- Luther WatersTeddy
Recommandations
- 89
Austin Chronicle
Neil Diamond isn't the best actor, and the 1980 version of The Jazz Singer doesn't have the best script, but this movie (love on the) rocks nonetheless. - 60
Chicago Reader
Neil Diamond's remake of the 1927 Jolson vehicle isn't very good, but neither is it the vacuous, sentimental ego trip it's been painted as. - 50
Variety
No one’s going to get sweaty palms waiting for the answer, as Samson Raphaelson’s venerable chestnut lacks urgency and plausible incidental detail. - 30
Newsweek
One look at[Neil Diamond's] conspicuously coiffed hair-do and spotlight-glazed eyes and you know this man has been assimilated years ago, probably at Caesars Palace...Richard Fleischer directed this twaddle, using so many yellow filters it looks as if jaundice had set in. [5 Jan 1981, p.55] - 30
Washington Post
Such a half-baked, arbitrary update that the decrepit plot seems to arise from the misty region of a kind of Jewish Brigadoon in contemporary Manhattan, a Ghetto That Time Forgot. [20 Dec 1980, p.D3] - 30
The New York Times
This movie has nothing but foolishness to carry it along. At least it is foolishness that pretends, however unsuccessfully, to be grand. [19 Dec 1980, p.C18] - 25
Chicago Sun-Times
The Jazz Singer has so many things wrong with it that a review threatens to become a list. Let me start with the most obvious: This movie is about a man who is at least 20 years too old for such things to be happening to him. The Jazz Singer looks ridiculous giving us Neil Diamond going through an adolescent crisis. - 25
TV Guide Magazine
Neil Diamond (who even reverts to Al Jolson's blackface for one sequence) is wholly unbelievable as the cantor's son who forsakes the synagogue for the bright lights of pop music.
