It’s 20 years down the road but Eddie Wilson’s music is heating up the charts in a way it never did in the old days. The a-holes at the record company have even found some unreleased music Eddie made without the Cruisers–but was it made before or after he drove off that bridge? Meanwhile Eddie is alive, living in Montreal under a new name, working construction, making music only for himself.
Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives! starts with a decent premise, Michael Pare returns as Eddie and has John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band back again to make the music. But fans of the original movie will quickly realize that this one was made simply to cash in and is devoid of any originality. The plotting is split between an A story showing a band coming together and a B line mystery of lost and now found Eddie Wilson tapes. Eddie is driven by his music and neither he nor the band is good enough for what is in his head. Even the Eddie Lives! songs are consciously chosen to mirror the energy and pace of the first.
Made by a Canadian cast and crew, other than Eddie only Matthew Laurance plays the same role except in a few brief flashbacks (taken from the first, not newly filmed), even the writers (Rick Doehring and Charles Zev Cohen in essentially their only IMDB-credited production) and director (Jean-Claude Lord???) were clearly chosen for low cost. Though I’ve never met these people and have nothing against them, the entire production is low budget and, if I recall correctly, went straight to video without benefit of theaters.
In a sense I was disappointed by Eddie Lives! because Eddie and the Cruisers was such a wonder to me. The obvious connection was to Bruce Springsteen, with a similar mythos and music, was really exciting at a time when Born in the USA was all over the charts. But the second film came out in the shadow of Bruce’s split with the E Street Band and, besides, what happened to Pare’s career in the six years between them?
Modestly recommended
BillSaysThis 