MOVIE REVIEW : Michael Pare Takes ‘Eddie II’ for a Pleasure Cruise

“Eddie and the Cruisers” was a 1983 sleeper, an engaging and modest little movie about a New Jersey rock star who apparently drowned in the summer of 1964 when he drove his blue-and-white ’57 Chevy convertible off a bridge and into the Raritan River. Almost 20 years later, a TV reporter, played by Ellen Barkin, delves into Eddie’s never-explained demise because all of a sudden Eddie’s records were bigger than ever. (Shades of Jim Morrison.) Although effective as a contemplation of the past’s hold on the present, the film ended unsatisfactorily.

With “Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives!” (citywide), a new set of film makers has been given a chance to round out Eddie’s story, and writers Charles Zev Cohen and Rick Doehring got on the right track. Although their script could have used some polish, it is fortunately sturdy enough to withstand some unintended laughs and the pedestrian quality of the contributions of director Jean-Claude Lord, cinematographer Rene Verzier and editor Jean-Guy Montpetite. The result is a pleasant, entertaining picture sparked by Michael Pare, returning as Eddie, by the driving music of Marty Simon and Leon Aronson and by the straightforward songs of John Cafferty, who once again supplies Eddie’s singing voice.

Eddie is alive and well and living in Montreal as construction worker Joe West. It’s 1982--something the production notes, not the film itself, make clear--and the executives of Eddie’s old record company intend to cash in on the renewed interest in Eddie. He may hate this hype, but it stirs him sufficiently to resume performing under his assumed name, taking over a young rock group.

There’s a certain sweet squareness to the film and to Eddie himself, who drills into his new colleagues the importance of hard work and practice in creating a great band. Eddie’s reasons for dropping out are credible, as is his increasing uncertainty about making a grab for the brass ring a second time around. Since all the pressures and contradictory feelings surrounding Eddie are so very familiar, it’s too bad the film spells them all out so literally.

In the first film, we had to take it on faith that Eddie was the stuff of legend, but you can believe it here when the sexy and charismatic Pare goes into action, in a perfect lip-sync with Cafferty’s voice, as deep as his own. He has developed considerable muscle since the first film, and is convincing as a man in his late 30s. He also effectively projects the isolation, the shy vulnerability of the spectacularly good-looking individual. (The rest of the cast is OK but fades into the background.)

If nothing else, “Eddie II” (mild for its PG-13 rating) could just give Pare another shot at the kind of big-screen opportunities Ellen Barkin and Tom Berenger (as one of the original Cruisers) have enjoyed since their appearances in “Eddie I.”