Crazy Heart

“Crazy Heart”

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal

Director: Scott Cooper

Studio:… “Crazy Heart”

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal

Director: Scott Cooper

Studio: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Grade: D

Imagine if Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain or John Lennon were living today.

Would they stretch out oldies on worldwide tours? Would they collaborate with Lady Gaga and Ke$ha to make the Billboard Top 100? Or maybe they would do a Geico commercial.

It would be stupid to say the American culture doesn’t believe the good die young. It’s rare for pure talent and creativity to last a lifetime, or even a decade.

But some do attempt to keep on rockin’ even as the death rattle of their career drowns out their performance.

Consider Jeff Bridges, the star of “Crazy Heart.”

Bridges stars as Bad Blake, a once-famous country music star who performs in bowling alleys and small-town bars to keep out of bankruptcy.

Blake’s got nothing going for him until he does an interview for a band mate’s niece, a spunky “go get ’em” journalist played by Maggie Gyllenhaal.

This movie involves more people, like a fellow country star played by Colin Farrell and an old bartender friend performed by Robert Duvall — but they’re unimportant.

Actually, nothing is important in this movie.

People have hailed Bridges’ performance as virtuoso, but one good actor cannot save this stink hole of a story.

Hollywood reuses the tale of redemption like it reuses Nicolas Cage. It keeps bringing back the basic outline of the story, but its efforts go unnoticed.

Why? Because Hollywood tries to make it different. It gives the story flair — or in terms of Cage, a moustache.

Every redemption story has the initial heap of misery and regret. Then, the naïve young person slowly reaches adulthood and makes the old fart change and then usually avenge some evil rival who has made it in the world, but through corrupt means.

Sounds familiar, right? Remember Pixar’s “Up”? I’ll bet you do. Same story, but with a twist.

The guy’s in a house with balloons and there are talking dogs, jokes and Toucan Sam birds. The filmmakers cleverly hide the redemption story so that viewers don’t notice the repetitiveness.

But “Crazy Heart” doesn’t cover it up. Heck, it’s running bare naked through the Southwest. This movie sings stereotypical redemption. The only story point the directors change is that instead of an evil rival, there’s just a rival.

The story has no conflict. There’s no antagonist, unless you want to call it alcoholism or Bad Blake himself. But that’s just dumb.

Bridges does a pretty good job playing a mean, rundown country music singer, but that provides no foundation for a film.

Meanwhile, Gyllenhaal acts like she’s reading cue cards hidden in Bridge’s unkempt beard, and Farrell doesn’t even take off his shirt.

“Crazy Heart” is repetitive and boring. It has scenes upon scenes of country music performances that all end up mimicking one another endlessly.

In “Walk the Line” or “La Vie en Rose,” you could show performances because we already understood that these people were musical geniuses.

But when you’re making up a character who’s supposed to be the country western equivalent of Mozart, don’t spend 30 minutes filming him playing his songs unless you’re certain that they’re mind-blowing.