Product Description

Music-based romantic drama about the late singer/songwriter Frankie Lymon, who was responsible for many hit records but whose self-destructive life ended early, with many relationships left unresolved. three women, each claiming to be his wife, each with

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12744 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 1999-01-19
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: AC-3, Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, Special Edition, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 116 minutes

From The New Yorker
Early on in this story of the doo-wop legend Frankie Lymon, there's a sequence in which the camera, standing in for the viewer, enters a rock palace from a busy city street in the mid-fifties. The honking car horns dissolve into the excited chatter of teen-agers in the lobby. Once through the doors of the auditorium, your eyes adjust to the darkness as you move down the aisle, taking it all in, from the balconies to the ornate ceiling to the group in the spotlight way down front. The closer you get to the stage, the more the music takes over: it's the majestic Platters singing "The Great Pretender," and up next are Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers. After that euphoric moment, it's all pretty much downhill for the talented and troubled Lymon (Larenz Tate), who left the Teenagers behind in 1957 and died of a drug overdose in 1968. The director, Gregory Nava, tells the story energetically, focussing on Frankie's three wives (Halle Berry, Lela Rochon, and Vivica A. Fox), who are all looking to get paid. Paul Mazursky is deliciously sleazy as Morris Levy, the president of Roulette Records (and copyright thief). -Ken Marks
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Entertaining delight!
The filmmakers know you've heard this tale before - true life chronicle of a young singing star's rise and tragic fall - and so they wisely downplay the standard bio trappings and instead focus on a raucously entertaining ride through Frankie Lymon's woman troubles. The smart screenplay revolves around the court battle of Lymon's three wives (yes, three!) over song royalties, leading to vivid (and often humorously contradictory) flashbacks of their lives with the singer. Larenz Tate is magnetic playing the many different sides of the ever-changing lead character, but the film ultimately belongs to Halle Berry, Vivica A. Fox and Lela Rochon as the wives. Each is allowed to shine as the trio portrays 30 years of changes in the women's lives, with Fox drop-dead hilarious as the most outrageous of the three. There's beautifully detailed '60s-era cinematography, sets, costuming and musical numbers, plus a side-splitting turn by Miguel Nunez as a young Little Richard. Major issues (such as '60s race relations) are barely glanced at, but what this film lacks in depth, it makes up for ten-fold in entertainment value. A winner!

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Love is Blind and So Are the Women!
The title fits the movie's subject because these women were foolish to falll in love with him. Despite his early career in music and rise to fame, he was on a path to destruction, which he could have controlled. Frankie Lymon, lead singer for the group Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, had the voice that made girls across America scream. But watching the movie, he was also selfish because he used his own members, who were also his friends to pursue a solo career; which was never achieved. He married Zora Taylor, a member of The Platters, Elizabeth Waters, and Emira Eagle; none of whom he divorced.
The movie got me to wonder if any of these women could see below the surface of this man. Why did they allow him to descend into drugs and self-loathing? If one really loves someone, they would either help them through or send them packing. It was obvious that he had them on a string. All three of them had to go to court to prove they were legally married to him and collect money from his estate. Unfortunately, the music industry wasn't as legally together as it is now. Therefore, any claim to what he sang is out of their reach.
Lymon's music still lives on as a reminder of the "good old days" when music wasn't sexually explicit and musicians could actually sing.

I guess I'm in the minority, because...
I really didn't care for this movie very much. I suppose those who say they love it don't really know anything about Frankie Lymon or his music, and saw it as just another film about a famous singer who died before his time. It barely mentions anything about young Lymon's career with the Washington Heights' kid doo-wop group he started out with, The Teenagers - instead the focus was on his three wives fighting in court over whom was most entitled to the small fortune he left behind. In 1968, Frankie died at age 26 of a heroin overdose, but the story itself takes place in the 1980s, nearly 20 years after Lymon's death. Instead of a true biography of this young man's tragic story, we got this.

"Why Do Fools Fall In Love?", which obviously takes its title from the hit song that Lymon co-wrote, never really gives you the reason why Frankie (played by the talented actor Larenz Tate) was so very important in the history of R&B/rock and roll. He was a superstar by the time he was 13, but he was thrust into an adult world way before he should have. He experienced too much too soon - he lived fast, loved and partied hard, and died young. Ignoring the fact that he was the first teenaged idol of rock and roll (like the little Michael Jackson of his era) and was a huge influence on other kid groups that would come after his, in this film Frankie was overwhelmingly (and sometimes unfairly) portrayed as nothing more than some '50s rock n' roll has-been who was a womanizer, bigamist, and a violent drug addict. That in itself is a gross disservice to the memory of Frankie and his musical legacy. There were so many things about the life of this gifted young man that was not even addressed here, and it is downright insulting to his fans to try to pass this off as a biopic.

On top of that, the three actresses who played his wives (Halle Berry, Vivica A. Fox, Lela Rochon) got more screen time than Larenz did, and was billed over him. Excuse me, but wasn't this film supposed to be Frankie's story? Surely his upbringing and struggles as a teenage entertainer alone certainly would have been enough to make this watchable. I was not interested in seeing a movie about his wives. Who cares about them? They were all depicted as greedy, disgruntled women who only wanted the privilege of being legally called "the one and the only Mrs. Frankie Lymon" because money was involved. They certainly didn't seem to have much love for him.

Larenz Tate is one of my favorite actors and he did his best, but he was too old for the role of Frankie, at least at the age of 13, anyway. I had to wonder at just what age did he become involved with Zola Taylor of the Platters, because you're given the impression that he was dealing with her when he was only 13! The real fault in this film lies within the script, written by Tina Andrews (who was also responsible for the equally ridiculous script in a 1999 TV movie about the so-called "romance" between the third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, and one of his female slaves, Sally Hemings). It was awful, and just not worthy of any of the actors' talents. It's clear that Ms. Andrews had little or no knowledge of Frankie's life story, so this is why we got a ridiculous film about his widows trying to cash in on his estate. Herman Santiago, one of the original Teenagers, had also written a screenplay about Frankie, but it was bypassed in favor of the one written by Andrews - maybe the producers should have reconsidered. Andrews was not there, but Santiago WAS. He could have given us more insight about the life of his former friend than someone who never knew him.

I gave it three stars for the musical performances, the footage of the real Frankie performing at the end, and a cameo by Little Richard, but I feel the definitive movie about his life has yet to be made. This doesn't even come close! He deserves better.