This Film Asks More Questions Than It Answers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                           "Maestro" could have been a great movie.  Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan give solid performances, as do Sarah Silverman, Gideon Glick, Michael Urie and others.   Cooper's direction and eye for the camera, especially in the black and white portions, is exquisite.  The film is a feast for the eye and the ear.

                            So, what goes wrong?   Darlings, it is highly sanitized.  Not about Lenny and the boys; they get their due, to be sure, albeit discreetly, but about how Lenny was such a horrible person, like his cohort, Jerome Robbins, played here by Michael Urie, to work with, belittling those who crossed his path.  Both Robbins and Bernstein are treated like saints in this film, and while they were geniuses, they were far from it.

                              I wish the film had kept the black and white tones, and the tempo of those sequences in going from life to stage.  When the color comes in, and the viewer gets bogged down in routine biopic territory going back to the Fifties, it disregards the good work that has gone before.

                               And someone tell me, because the film does not--what the hell did Jamie and the other Bernstein children do with their lives, other than living off a trust fund being an offspring of Leonard Bernstein?  Oh, sure, Jamie has done some stints on WQXR, but is that supposed to put food on her table?  I may be carping, but when a film feels as manufactured as this, credibility of filmmaker, cast and crew are called into question.

                                 See "Maestro" on the big screen, for the music and those black and white sequences.  But do not expect a definitive biopic.  Well made, but not definitive.

                                   Let "the band play on," darlings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!