Lack of good storyline.

Brilliant and touching

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

This is a great film. Yes it is long. Yes some of the songs should have been cut but they weren't but we get a masterpiece anyway.In this film Esther Blodgett is a talented aspiring singer with a band, and Norman Maine is a former matinee idol with a career in the early stages of decline. When he arrives intoxicated at a function at the Shrine Auditorium, the studio publicist attempts to keep him away from reporters. After an angry exchange, Norman rushes away and bursts onto a stage where an orchestra is performing. Esther takes him by the hand and pretends he is part of the act, thereby turning a potentially embarrassing and disruptive moment into an opportunity for the audience to greet Norman with applause.Norman then takes Esther under his wing and gets her a screen test at the studio in which he works. She ends up homecoming a major star and his drinking escalates! After the film was released Warner Brothers recalled the prints. 30 minutes were edited out. In 1983 Ron Haver was able to restore most of the film. Where he could not find footage for the missing scenes he used productions stills. People claim this halts the picture. It doesn't! Besides it only last a total of 7 minutes. It is not 7 minutes all at once! Now in 2010 it was reported that film restorer Michael Arick had a print of this film. He will not let Warner Brothers use the print. Some people claim that he doesn't have a print however "He has never publicly denied it". It is also Rumored that Tommy from Beverly Hills has hours of the films outtakes on VHS however it is silent footage. Maybe it might include the missing 7 minutes.

I saw this yesterday at the Regent Street Cinema.I had no idea that it was the reconstructed version that they were showing,if i had know then i am not sure that i would have gone.To me the problem was that every time the drama seemed to gain momentum it was stopped in its tracks by yet another interminable musical number by Judy Garland.In fact it went on that i had to leave before the end to deal with more pressing matters.I have to say that Judy Garland did not look in good shape at times.It was rather difficult to understand why she would ever fall for someone so obnoxious as Norman Maine.Also it has to be said that the portrayal by Charles Bickford made him look more like Mother Theresa than the real article such as Jack Warner.Given the fact that this film cost over $5million and made a loss it is little surprise that Graland made so few films after this or that she failed to win an Oscar.She had rubbed enough people up the wrong way and was never likely to win a popularity contest.

. . . by a craven Hollywood community totally cowed by the Witch Hunters in the voting for the "best picture" Oscar of 1954, as American turncoat super-snitch director Elia Kazan's anti-Labor screed, ON THE WATERFRONT, took a cowardly plurality of votes away from A STAR IS BORN. The latter George Cukor picture is a landmark in Irony, as the real-life primary victim of Tinsel Town's "studio system" at its worst--Judy Garland--is forced into essentially caricaturing her past and future Passion of Frances Ethel Gumm, right down to being convinced by the make-up department that she has a Frankenstein face. Remarkably, Cukor presents James Mason's elderly alcoholic character, "Norman Maine," as STAR's tragic focus. As Gertrude Stein always said, "a drunk is a drunk is a drunk," and at "Norman's" age, the only pathos involved in his passing at sea is that he did not croak SOONER. Ms. Garland herself, expiring at age 47, Philip Seymour Hoffman (46), Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle (46), John Candy (43), Elvis (42), Paul Walker (40), Chris Penn (40), Anna Nicole Smith (39), Corey Haim (38), Sal Mineo (37), Bobby Darin (37), Robert Williams (37), Marilyn Monroe (36), Jayne Mansfield (34), John Belushi (33), Carole Lombard (33), Chris Farley (33), Brittany Murphy (32), Bruce Lee (32), Rudolph Valentino (31), Heath Ledger (28), Brandon Lee (28), Edie Sedgwick (28), Jean Harlow (26), Brad Renfro (25), James Dean (24), River Phoenix (23), Aaliyah (22), Freddie Prinze (22), Heather O'Rourke (12), and countless other actors died young enough to become tragic figures in Real Life; not so "Norman Maine," even in fiction. And, of course, Judy herself filmed STAR exactly halfway between playing OZ's 12-year-old "Dorothy Gale" and passing away herself, which constitutes the biggest "tragedy" of all!

This film has a lot of history and baggage, to be sure. Judy Garland had been dropped from "The Barkleys of Broadway" (which resulted in the happy reunion of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire in their only Technicolor movie) and "Annie Get Your Gun" and she and her fans were hopeful that "A Star Is Born" would be her big comeback vehicle. I recently viewed the movie on Blu-ray, not having seen it before, and I have to say that I was not overwhelmed by any of it. In fact, I found a good bit of it annoying. It was too long and should have been cut, though that should have been done by George Cukor, not the studio. I know that the Judy-Garland-can-do-no-wrong crowd won't like this, but she was, in my opinion, a bit too old and a bit too plump for the part and in all of her musical numbers, she is just trying so hard to knock it out of the park, the result is performances that are too over-the-top and frantic. Everything about this film seems bloated, dated, and just boring. The insertion of stills to fill in for missing footage is distracting, too. It would have been better to have done as they did with the recent "South Pacific" release and offered two versions--the complete, "restored" roadshow version, with the stills and extra footage, and the shortened version. In sum: this is a curiosity item and not without interest, but not the masterpiece that many would claim. If you are looking for a showcase of Judy's mature singing talent, this may be your cup of tea. Otherwise, forget it.