Revisiting Childhood Movies Part XXI:

La Bamba

  • Director:  Luis Valdez
  • Writer:  Luis Valdez
  • Producer:  Bill Borden  /  Taylor Hackford
  • Stars:  Lou Diamond Phillips, Esai Morales, Rosanna DeSoto, Elizabeth Peña
  • Studio:  Columbia
  • Award Nominations:  Golden Globe – Picture (Drama)
  • Length:  108 min
  • Genre:  Musical (Biopic)
  • MPAA Rating:  PG-13
  • Release Date:  24 July 1987
  • Box Office Gross:  $54.21 mil  (#15 – 1987)
  • Ebert Rating:  ***
  • My Rating:  ***
  • My Rank:  #30 (year)
  • Nighthawk Nominations:  none
  • Nighthawk Notables:  Best Soundtrack
  • First Watched:  on video when first released
  • Number of Times Watched as a Kid:  5 or so

As a Kid:  I wasn’t that much into music yet in 1987.  Yes, I had been watching videos on MTV for a few years but I didn’t know that much, especially about older music.  In fact, I had a tendency to believe that any song that I didn’t know who was singing it (“Eve of Destruction”, “American Pie”, “The Longest Time”) that it was being sung by The Beatles (when my brother John corrected me on these, he explained that he could understand if I had thought “Eve of Destruction” was sung by Springsteen, but by The Beatles?  I explained that I assumed every major song was sung by The Beatles.).  I hadn’t yet seen The Buddy Holly Story but I had a vague notion of The Day the Music Died because of growing up with “American Pie”.  Then this film came out.  More importantly, since I didn’t see this film in the theater, the soundtrack came out, a soundtrack that my brother Kelly bought during a summer that he and I shared a room.

This soundtrack was a revelation.  I didn’t care at the time that I was learning new versions of old hits.  I just loved the music, especially the title track, “Come on Let’s Go”, “Summertime Blues” and most especially “Crying, Waiting, Hoping”.  When I finally had a chance to see the movie, on video, I enjoyed the story, watching a local LA boy hit it big before his tragic death.  But again, what I really cared about was the music.  Thinking about it before re-watching it the other night, the only scenes in the film that I really remembered as scenes (and not just clips from the video for the song) was the final moving scenes when Esai Morales, as Ritchie’s older brother Bob, runs to his mother’s house in the hope of catching her before she hears the news.  It was a good movie and Lou Diamond Phillips was clearly a rising star (and was still rising for a few years with Stand and Deliver and the Young Guns films before stalling out) but to me it was all about the music.

As an Adult:  It’s often all about the music.  Films about true rock and roll acts rarely rise above ***, which makes La Bamba, which earns a 75, the highest rating for a three star film, one of the better ones.  The only ones that really rise above that and into my Best Picture contenders are either testament to amazing ensemble acting (Walk the Line, Ray) or something really innovative (24 Hour Party People).  This is a pretty standard rock and roll biopic, just above other similar, but not quite as good films like The Buddy Holly Story, Nowhere Boy, Backbeat, What’s Love Got to Do With It and The Runaways.  It never quite rises to heights partially because it’s got such a dour feeling over all of it, with the tense family drama and the ever-present spectre of Valens’ impending death (when he is afraid of flying because of a real crash explained in the film).

Watching this film again I am reminded of the tagline from Without Limits: “The story of a life unfinished”.  Poor Ritchie Valens went through all of that drama and he created such wonderful music and then he was dead and he wasn’t even 18 yet.  Watching Phillips, who’s really a bit too old to play him, but who does a fantastic job, you sense every part of his personality that he allowed to flow into his music.  The acting in this film might not be at the same level as Ray, but it’s up there.

In the end, in spite of the performances, it still comes down to the music.  Well, sometimes the performances and the music are intertwined.  Look at the glorious way Stephen Lee as The Big Bopper says “hello baby” and both Veronica and I wondered if he really greeted everyone like that (which is kind of awesome).  Marshall Crenshaw was so good as Buddy Holly that Stephen King touted him to play the singer Larry Underwood in the film version of The Stand and his performance of “Crying, Waiting, Hoping” is so incredible (and yet different from Holly’s original – I absolutely love them both) that it lead me to Buddy Holly’s music.  If there’s a weakness for me in celebrating Valens, who was incredible, it’s that given a choice between a cd of Buddy Holly’s best and a cd of 80 minutes of any pre-Beatles song not by Holly, I would go for the former.  Yes, Elvis had the lasting cultural impact but to me it’s all about Buddy Holly.  Although, I can’t miss talking about Howard Huntsberry, who so perfectly channels Jackie Wilson.  And probably the best casting is Brian Setzer as Eddie Cochran.  Of all the versions ever recorded of “Summertime Blues”, Setzer’s version is by far my favorite and even the extra scene between him and Ritchie and Alan Freed has the nice Cochran swagger (and Cochran died just a year after Valens).

But I can’t say enough about the music of this film.  There’s a reason why I put this post up after my 80’s music post.  This film had the top three spots for “Covers of 50’s Songs” and I listed it as the second best soundtrack of the decade.  You can go and listen the originals and you absolutely should.  But, with the possible exception of Joaquin Phoenix’s version of “Ring of Fire”, I can’t imagine any film in which new recordings of classic songs are used on the soundtrack that comes anywhere close to what this film does.  So, go back and listen to the originals, but make sure you come back for what Los Lobos and Crenshaw and Setzer do here, because it’s incredible.