His story will make you cry. His music will make you sing. His triumph will make you cheer.

Sometimes you have to risk it all...


Pop singer Neil Diamond stars in this ill-begotten second remake of Al Jolson's seminal 1927 musical The Jazz Singer. The moth-eaten story concerns a cantor's son who desires success as a pop singer, despite the wishes of his imperious father. The film takes place in the present day with Yussel Rabinowitz (Neil Diamond) playing a young (though middle-aged looking) cantor performing at the synagogue of his father (Laurence Olivier). Yussel is married and has settled down to a life of religious devotion to the teaching of his fath. But on the side, he writes songs for a black singing group, and when a member of the quartet takes ill, Yussel covers for him at one of their gigs by wearing blackface! The nightclub engagement is such a success that Yussel abandons his family -- and his father's synagogue -- and leaves his New York home for Los Angeles, hoping to break into the music business. Almost immediately he is spotted by spunky agent Molly Bell (Lucie Arnaz), who books him as an opening act for a touring comic. Yussel hits it big, but his father resents Yussel's forsaking their traditional Jewish ways. His father disowns him, rending his garments and bellowing, "I hef no son!"


The Jazz Singer is a 1980 American drama film and a remake of the 1927 classic The Jazz Singer, released by EMI Films and United Artists. It starred Neil Diamond, Laurence Olivier, and Lucie Arnaz and was co-directed by Richard Fleischer and Sidney J. Furie.
Although the film was a critical flop, the soundtrack was enormously successful, eventually reaching multi-platinum status and becoming Diamond's most successful album to date. It resulted in three hit songs, "America", "Love on the Rocks" and "Hello Again".


Unlike the original, the film received mostly negative reviews. Based on 20 reviews, Rotten Tomatoes listed it with a 15% "Rotten" rating (61% less positive than the 1927 film). Roger Ebert from the Chicago Sun-Times, awarding it one star out of four, said that the remake "has so many things wrong with it that a review threatens to become a list". Another negative review came from Janet Maslin of The New York Times who stated: "Mr. Diamond, looking glum and seldom making eye contact with anyone, isn't enough of a focus for the outmoded story." Time Out London called the appearance of Neil Diamond "the most cautious soft-rock superstar movie debut you'll ever get to see." The only top critic to give a positive review of the film (according to Rotten Tomatoes) was Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader. He wrote that "Richard Fleischer's direction is appropriately close-in and small, and Diamond himself, while no actor, proves to be a commandingly intense, brooding presence." The film is listed in Golden Raspberry Award founder John Wilson's book The Official Razzie Movie Guide as one of the The 100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made


Release Date: December 19, 1980


Distrib: AFD

Boxoffice: $27,118,000 2013: $81,152,400