Gone are the days of meat dresses, of hair bows and frivolous wigs.  The Lady Gaga in A Star is Born is someone who we have never seen before, and in many ways, it is the most intimate Gaga that we have ever experienced. Stephanie Germanotta plays Ally, the shy girl with a knockout voice, in the latest remake of this Hollywood Classic.  Bradley Cooper’s character, Jackson “Jack” Maine, a famous singer, first meets Ally in a gay bar while on the hunt for another drink.  Jack’s addiction and alcoholism is apparent in the opening scene and already the toll it has taken on his body is apparent.  The moment that Jack laid eyes on Ally, he fell in love with her and recognized that she has a special kind of talent; a unique talent that allowed her to be the only female allowed to sing in a gay bar full of big ol’ queens.  After impressing Ally with his own musical talents, she agrees to go out with him for a drink, a push to start a budding relationship between these two characters.

Jack catapults Ally into the music industry by convincing her to sing an original song at his next sold out show.  Ally becomes a constant at his shows and starts to attract the attention of prominent managers.  As Ally starts to get more famous, Jack starts to decline, both in his health and popularity.  In the end, makes a choice that will have the entire audience in tears.  Bradley Cooper directed his first movie cautiously, and this played out to his advantage.  He allowed Gaga to have more than a few singing numbers so that her singing talent could grab people’s attention if they were starting to get bored.

This movie falls short from being a full-blown grand slam because of the fact that it at some point has to own up to being A Star is Born remake.  If it was purely a romantic movie that did not have to adhere to the fable story line, then it would have had more cinematic freedom and been easier to follow.  The movie was strongest in it first and third acts when the plot was centered on Jack’s and Ally’s relationship.  It lost its way in the second act when the rising star Ally is juxtaposed against the falling star of Jack.  It felt that at times the movie was trying to make Ally into something that she was not.  By changing her hair color, her genre and adding dancers, the character of Ally lost its way.  This is negative aspect of the film can be forgotten because of how brutally honest it was about the music industry and how hard it is to struggle with traumatic experiences.  The movie takes the showy and ostentatious Gaga that we all know and love and changes her into a young woman who is averse to the pursuit of fame.  The movie references how Ally was told she would never find fame because her nose was too big (an echo from the 1976 remake).  The movie champions the idea of being who you are and serves as an example that if you strive in what you want, it will happen.

Do not just cast aside this movie because it is a remake.  Embrace it because of the chemistry between Jack and Ally.  These were such powerful characters that they transformed the act of seeing a movie from an idle pastime into an active experience in which the audience was right there with the characters.  They were with Ally as she tried to cover up Jack peeing his pants on national television.  They were with Charlie as he waited outside while Jack hung himself.  This movie is both perfect for the little monsters that want to see Mother Monster strut her stuff, and also for the cautious people that were mad a sexy and risqué actress was playing the role that the princess-like Barbra Streisand once inhabited.  A Star is Born is a celebration for people, music and supreme love that people can have for one another.