**Release date:** 24 October 2025 (UK)
**Director:** Scott Cooper
**Starring:** Jeremy Allen White; Jeremy Strong; Paul Walter Hauser; Stephen Graham; Odessa Young
**Running time:** 1h 59m
**Producers:** Scott Cooper, Scott Stuber, Eric Robinson, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein
**Distributed by:** 20th Century Studios

At some point, it was decided (by me) that the baby and I would attend baby cinema every week, regardless of the film. This doctrine has been largely successful, though occasionally testing (Downton Abbey: never forget). Never, however, has it been quite so tough to uphold as this week, when the screening of Springsteen: Deliver me from Nowhere fell on my birthday.

Now, I will admit that I didn’t have really any birthday plans. I will also admit that it was in general great that my birthday coincided with baby cinema day, when we were surrounded by friends, cake and popcorn. But I will also admit that I know virtually nothing at all about Bruce Springsteen. His name has just been one of of those sounds to me, that floats around as you go through life, vaguely aware of its existence but unable to get much further than humming the Born in the USA riff. Is Springsteen cool? Is he…good? Once upon a time I dated a guitar guy, and would have been able to ask this question and receive a comprehensive answer which would have satisfied. Simpler times.

The first thing to report is that having now seen this film, I still have no idea if Springsteen is either cool nor good. Jeremy Allen White, or ‘that guy from The Bear’ is, I think, generally considered to be both. Obviously I don’t know anything about Springsteen so I can’t tell you if this is a good portrayal, but it seemed like a solid piece of acting. Jeremy Strong, or ‘that guy from Succession’ is also considered both, and I have to say, I found his performance as Springsteen’s manager terrible to the point where I wondered if he was performing a secret comedy gig in the middle of this otherwise not very funny film. But again, I don’t really have any idea. I am now married to an actor, who would have been able to give me a comprehensive answer, but alas, he was not there.

*I can’t even think of a caption here, it’s all so dull*

As with The Smashing Machine, the principle issue here is an attempt to fictionalise a reality which just isn’t very dramatic. I don’t know how much of this film is true to the facts, but I’m going to assume, given the existence of an enthusiastic fandom, that the answer is most of it. And so I can confidently say that, while I still don’t know if he is cool or good, Springsteen, at least according to this film, is DULL.

We endure, over one hundred and nineteen excruciating minutes, Bruce renting a car. Bruce being sad. Bruce playing a couple of gigs. Bruce recording some songs in his bedroom. Bruce recording some songs in a recording studio. Bruce screwing over a perfectly nice woman for the vaguest of reasons (he had a difficult childhood? He’s busy? He’s…a bit of a prat?) And in the background throughout is Jeremy Strong, providing a running commentary of Bruce’s latest drama to his poor wife, a character who exists solely to listen to a man talking about another man. While we, poor souls, watch her. Among her very few lines is ‘it sounds like Bruce is pushing boundaries that you need to acknowledge’ which suggests that somewhere along the way she’s got herself some therapy. Good for her. There’s an entire scene where she says absolutely nothing at all, just sits in bed applying hand cream while Jeremy monologues about Bruce’s latest sad spell.

This could have been a film about depression - how it gets even the most successful, the ones who look like they’ve got it all together. Unfortunately, the Bruce Springsteen of it all gets in the way, which is a shame, because at least that would have been something lots of us could relate to. Last year, I had a very strange birthday. Early pregnancy had sent me a bit nuts, and as I turned 40 my brain had sort of disassociated from the rest of me. I spent a lot of it feeling that slightly underwatery feeling you get when everything’s become a bit much, and all the sights and sounds around you feel slightly muffled. I was, to use fewer words than Jeremy Strong does in this film, depressed. It’s weird, with the actual real life baby in my lap, to think about this time last year. Even weirder to spend that strange anniversary watching a film about Bruce bloody Springsteen.

Anyway, look, I think we can all agree this film wasn’t for me. Perhaps there are ecstatic Springsteen fans out there raving about it - though, as a fellow victim pointed out, there wasn’t an awful lot of Bruce’s music in the film either. And so I don’t really know why this film exists, except that music biopics, especially ones about wildly successful white guys wearing demin, are quite popular, and a lot of people would generally rather fund a boring film about one of them than dare to entertain a film where two women talk to each other about something interesting. Or, incidentally, where men talk honestly with each other about depression.

The women I saw this film with spent quite a lot of it, as I did, audibly laughing at such cringe moments as recording studio technicians nodding to each other in a spiritual manner as Bruce struck a couple of cords, or poor Jeremy’s wife delivering another half hearted nod of sympathy. One of them brought me a giant bag of M&Ms. We ate cake and popcorn. We smiled at each other’s babies. Unlike last year, I spent this birthday in glorious, surround sound technicolour, and - as per the rules of baby cinema club - it really didn’t matter what the film was.

Good things: Relax and enjoy the absolutely bizarre performance from Jeremy Strong, you might as well get something out of the two hours

Bad things: The fat suit. Justice for Stephen Graham.

My review: I had a lovely birthday

Lily’s review: zero poos

Next week: Begonia. Bogania? Bugania? That font is crazy.

Next week: Emma Stone

Springsteen: Deliver me from Nowhere

Bugonia

After the Hunt