Summary

• Bradley Cooper's second movie as a director, Maestro, is not as successful as his debut film, A Star Is Born.
• Although Cooper's performance in Maestro has received praise, it falls short compared to the acclaim for his directorial debut.
• Maestro has a positive reception with a 79% Tomatometer score and 76% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, but it doesn't match the critical success of A Star Is Born.

Bradley Cooper's latest movie, Maestro, is not doing as well as A Star Is Born. Cooper wrote and directed Maestro, which walks through the life of the legendary composer Leonard Bernstein. It was his second movie as a director, after 2018's A Star Is Born, which was the latest version of the tragic love story between two musicians falling in and out of love as they climb their way to wealth and fame. Before that, Cooper largely worked as an award-winning actor and producer.

Cooper's performance in Maestro has earned accolades, but it pales in comparison to the praise for his directorial debut. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes has nothing but praise for A Star Is Born, holding a Tomatometer score of 90% from critics and an audience score of 80%. At the time of writing, Maestro earned a Tomatometer score of 79% from critics and an audience score of 76% on Rotten Tomatoes. It is a positive result, but it's nothing compared to Cooper's prior effort.

The Differences Between A Star Is Born And Maestro

Despite both revolving around musicians, A Star Is Born and Maestro are very different movies that each have different audiences and appeals. Maestro is a biographic film, aiming to explain the life and struggles of Bernstein, including his relationship with his wife Felicia Montealegre, played by two-time Oscar nominee Carey Mulligan. The former is a fictional story but somewhat unoriginal, having been told three other times before Cooper took on the project.

While the 2018 movie has been remade so many times, Cooper does tackle it from a much more modern perspective. After all, the Star is Born soundtrack features the original song "Shallow", which won an Oscar for Best Original Song. It tackles classic themes of a tragic love story, but Cooper weaves in contemporary elements to keep the movie feeling relatable to modern audiences.

Unlike Star, most of Maestro's reviews indicate that it is a much more artistic movie that emulates classic styles. Cooper takes care to update the visuals to better suit each decade of Bernstein's life. With every timeline shift, the footage quality updates, until it matches the sharp and modern cameras that are in use in Hollywood today. It's an impressive display, but the Rotten Tomatoes scores indicate that it struggles to match the quality of A Star Is Born. With the movie already garnering four Golden Globe nominations, Maestro is still a success, but Bradley Cooper may need to reinvent his directorial approach to replicate his initial success.

Source: Rotten Tomatoes