It's called Why Do Fools Fall in Love, and it's named for Lymon's biggest hit, which he sang as front man for the vocal group the Teenagers. That he recorded the tune in 1955, at the tender age of 13, went generally downhill from there and died at 25 is a biographical problem the current dramatists (writer Tina Andrews; director Gregory Nava, who helmed last year's Selena) have failed to solve. In lieu of an interesting or productive adulthood for Lymon, they've hastened to fill in Frankie's blanks with the lives of other people--not exactly what you want in a full-bodied biopic.
The first was Zola Taylor (Halle Berry), the female singer in the Platters; the second was Elizabeth "Mickey" Waters (Vivica A. Fox), a welfare mother with a penchant for shoplifting; the third was Emira Eagle (Lela Rochon), a prim Georgia schoolteacher who liked to bake. The film seeks, with varying success, to make each of them interesting. And it tells us that they were all interested in collecting royalties from Lymon's estate at a court hearing many years after his death. They all wanted payback from their beloved but troublesome trigamist. Larenz Tate, the handsome star of Menace II Society and love jones, is far too mature to play Frankie at 13 and 14 (which the film's flashbacks call upon him to do), the three actresses aren't very convincing as women of nearly 50 (which the movie also requires) and their bickering over the cash isn't all that compelling to begin with. But the re-created concert sequences, done in perfect lip-synch to the original recordings, are spectacular--some silky Platters doing "The Great Pretender"; Tate-as-Lymon singing the title tune, "Goody Goody" and others; and an apoplectic Little Richard imitator belting out "Tutti Frutti."
Fools comes nowhere close, in dramatic force, to one of its obvious models, What's Love Got to Do With It (1993), which told the harrowing tale of Ike and Tina Turner. And its best comic moments come with the appearance of the real Little Richard, irrepressible wonder that he is, in a cameo as a courtroom witness. But the flashback concert pieces, sprinkled throughout the movie, are sheer musical splendor. If you're willing to forgive a lot of dramatic dead weight and an inflated running time of two hours and 15 minutes, and simply wait for the tunes, you'll have a pretty good time. Think of this as a string of terrific big-screen music videos interrupted here and there by lousy writing and miscast actors, and you might even imagine you've gotten your money's worth.
Why Do Fools Fall in Love
Directed by Gregory Nava.
Rated
