Jeff Bridges, Beau Bridges, and Michelle Pfeiffer all get one of the best roles of their careers in The Fabulous Baker Boys, a musical melodrama set amidst Seattle’s musician-for-hire scene. Brothers Jack and Frank Baker (played by brothers Jeff and Beau, respectively) have been mainstays of the hotel bar and supper club scene for 15 years—professionals, but just barely. To reinvigorate their act, they bring in chanteuse Susie Diamond (Pfeiffer), who disrupts the equilibrium in various ways. Pfeiffer is like a nightclub singer the catwoman dragged in—a bit bedraggled and worse for wear—yet she also makes Susie a woman of fierce determination, especially when it comes to her career. And she can sing, never more so than when she’s slithering atop Jack’s piano for a New Year’s Eve rendition of “Makin’ Whoopee” (Pfeiffer did her own vocals). Bridges is also great in that scene—in awe at the brazenness of her performance, even letting out a guffaw when she ruffles his hair—as well as unafraid to commit to Jack’s darker moments, of which there are many. There’s an alley argument with Susie in which Jack drips with cruelty, not even bothering to remove the cigarette dangling from his mouth. In some ways, Beau Bridges gets the thankless part, but that’s the point—Frank is the stable, boring family man whose reliability allows Jack to indulge himself. (Beau Bridges manages to make Frank both noble and pitiable.) If The Fabulous Baker Boys disappoints at all, it’s when the narrative leans too heavily on the idea of Jack as a misunderstood genius who is wasting his talent (even having him hang out at a black jazz joint in a pandering attempt to validate his “authenticity”). Otherwise, writer-director Steve Kloves (who would go on to write the screenplays for all the Harry Potter films) takes three gripping characters who could each anchor their own movie, and crafts a film that honors all of them.
