Why Do Fools Fall in Love

Why Do Fools Fall In Love is one of my favortie music movies next to Sparkle and The Five Heartbeats. Larenz Tate is great as Frankie Lymon although the film isn't really his, it's more the story of his wives. Played three fine black actresses. The music, settings and direction are all every good. If you wanna have a good time chekc this one out.

I thought this was a great movie, a little off-base, but a lot of fun. I'm a big Frankie Lymon fan, so it's nice to see a movie about him. The music was great in the film, and I think Tate did a great job as Frankie. And of course the leading ladies were great, hilarious, and emotional. I do have a question though. The credits don't list who plays the Kinks. There was a scene where they performed on Hullaballoo. Does anyone have any idea? Particularly who played Dave Davies? I was told it was remastered from an original show, but I highly doubt it. Overall, this is definitely a movie I added to my collection. I recommend for any doowop fan!

i think halle berry, viv fox, and lela rochon are tops!! great flick!! i bought it on DVD and cant stop watchin it!! wheres lela rochon lately though?? shes too talented to just leave films!! i think larenz tate did real good too~~~

Other commentators seem to feel this is, or should have been, a movie about the life of Frankie Lyman. However, as the title indicates, it is really about three women who fell in love ... with a guy named Frankie Lyman. As the movie brings home fairly early, there is not much about Frankie to love. He is portrayed as a shallow, self-centered fool, with as little understanding of the music business as of the women he scams into being his wives. Did Frankie have raw talent? Of course he did. Did Frankie do anything to develop this raw talent into an enduring musical career? No evidence of that. So much for Frankie. Larenz Tate plays him fairly well on stage, and rather flat off stage. We are not given a clue as to what the attraction may have been. And, since two of the women were relatively unaware of his celebrity status when they were first taken with him, and the third had a celebrity status of her own, we expect the movie to answer the title question. The women do not entirely succeed in this, but they are terrifically watchable while they try. Halle Berry is great as Zola Taylor, singer with the Platters. Viveca Fox is almost as good as the home girl who turns hooker to support Frankie, and Lela Rachon is perfect as the goodie-two-shoes last wife, a God-fearing and educated working woman. The music scenes are good, and the courtroom scenes are outrageously unrealistic. This would have been a better movie if they had not specifically based the story on Lyman, but only alluded to him. In this manner, the Hollywoodization of the story would have been less noticeable. Unfortunately, realizing that such a course would inevitably preclude using the Lyman hits, they chose to make this a triography of the wives, and allow them to play off Tate's weak Lyman persona. All in all, a good couple of hours of enjoyment that is not too compelling. When it was over, we found ourselves asking, "Why DID these three fools fall in love?"

All three women are stunning and entertaining. Viveca A. Fox has the best and most challenging role and she NAILS IT. She is absolutely amazing. This film is a must see. It really has it all. You will adore these three actresses after viewing.

Frankie Lymon died of a drug overdose in 1968.As a big one hit wonder with his song "Why Do Fools Fall In Love" Lymon might have received some royalties from the record, but didn't. When three former wives hear a version of the song done by Diana Ross,they want to sue for royalties but first each of the three women must win a court case to prove who was the real and legal wife of Frankie Lymon. The movie "Why Do Fools Fall In Love" is a shoddy and disrespectful look into the life of Frankie Lymon. The movie is truly about these three women trying to win the royalties of the song, not to prove they really loved Frankie Lymon. It is bad enough that Hollywood makes a movie about a black male celebrity that Hollywood always brings up the details of Lymon's drug use and points to him for the audience that he is a loser after his singing days are over. We never get a true look at Frankie Lymon and his life.Where did the movie fail in one big detail? Lymon was not as short as the actor who portrayed him ,the talented Larenz Tate,he grew up to over six feet tall.His singing voice changed of course,he couldn't sing those sweet songs of his youth,but he had a decent voice in his adult years. But no one wanted the grown up Frankie Lymon.They wanted this little kid with the falsetto voice,not the adult Frankie Lymon and he couldn't get noticed in the new R&B market that came to pass in the sixties. His story ,and the story of his former group the Teenagers,was done quite well in a PBS documentary about the group called "I Promise To Remember".This was shown several years ago and it is worth while to look at about what happen to the group ,where they are now(where they were at the time of the broadcast),and and what happened to Frankie in truth.It is a well done program. The movie is not,however.Filled with profanity,the women come off as bitter uneducated jerks only going for the money.The film and the film makers in essence then to degrade the subject as a three timing drug taking failure.The film lowers itself then as the wives complain about Frankie and start the feminist cant about men in general and Frankie in particular.It doesn't bother the filmakers that Lymon's real life family has to watch him being dragged thru the mud and embarrassed and that they have to have him and themselves disgraced in this fashion. The three women got thankfully very little after in the end and the viewers of this film receive the same,very little.Frankie Lymon was not perfect,he was no saint.But this film disgraces him ,just like Bird did to Charlie Parker.In the end of the film we see the real Lymon singing "Goody-Goody" on a TV show.It is the only glimpse of the real Lymon in the movie.But after this film Frankie Lymon shall be looked at in one way and one way only,as a tragic disgrace.

Director Gregory Nava misunderstands the complex, drug-addicted Frankie Lymon getting some of it right and much of it wrong. His fatal mistake from beginning to end is playing Frankie as a late teen instead of the 13 teen year old he was. This deprives one and all of seeing the simple true source of Frankie's problems. Too much fame, too fast and too young. Larenz Tate struggles with the role where he sometimes looks more like a young Sammy Davis than Frankie. The singing and dancing sequences are acceptable and Tate brings the music off adequately. The racial issues, which the film deals with, have some truth, but the details are inaccurate. In 1957 audiences in some venues were segregated, but in others were mixed and not a problem. The idea that this music helped end segregation is mentioned, but not really seen, except for the incredible scene of Frankie dancing with a white girl on 'The Big Beat'. This big surprise is very effectively handled and has major impact. I don't think Nava understands doo-wop or the relationship of the lead singer to the backups. There is a big difference between the Platters, essentially a white pop adultish Ink Spots type group and the Teenagers who were rock 'n' roll, appealing to those under 21. This just never comes across. Nava does do some clever things, pointed out in the director's cut (not recommended, way too 'Goody, Goody') as he uses a continuous roll camera to suck you in and wrap you around the scene he is filming. The attempts to stylize 'Fools' mostly works. The theme of creating the four main characters as Earth (Lela Rochon as Emira Eagle), Fire (Halle Berry as Zola Taylor), Water (Vivca Fox as Elizabeth Waters) as the 3 wives to play off Wind (Tate-Frankie) is clever and consistent. The use of scatchy 8MM flash backs is a bit over done, but gets the point of flashbacks across. All three of the parts of the wives suffer from being overly dramatic (and over acted)with the need to fit truth to the story, rather than the other way around. Most disturbing is the handling of Frankie's music. Its hard to tell his solo work from his Teenagers stuff and the sequencing of the music is out of order. At least Nava makes it clear Frankie was not a 'One hit wonder' and he had four years of outstanding singles and (not mentioned at all) some super albums, mostly as a solo. As one of the wives mentions, above all "he could sing my panties off". If you don't think so, play Frankie's version of "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" followed by the weak, sad Diana Ross version. Next time Mr. Gregory Nava when doing an autobiography spend as much time keeping your facts straight and in order, as you do with clever stylization. Not recommended unless your a fan of any of the elements involved. Wanna a good music bio from more or less the same period and effectively dealing with drug addiction, watch "Ray" the magnificent Ray Charles story.

The filmmakers know you've heard this tale before - true life chronicle of a young singing star's rise and tragic fall - and so they wisely downplay the standard bio trappings and instead focus on a raucously entertaining ride through Frankie Lymon's woman troubles. The smart screenplay revolves around the court battle of Lymon's three wives (yes, three!) over song royalties, leading to vivid (and often humorously contradictory) flashbacks of their lives with the singer. Larenz Tate is magnetic playing the many different sides of the ever-changing lead character, but the film ultimately belongs to Halle Berry, Vivica A. Fox and Lela Rochon as the wives. Each is allowed to shine as the trio portrays 30 years of changes in the women's lives, with Fox drop-dead hilarious as the most outrageous of the three. There's beautifully detailed '60s-era cinematography, sets, costuming and musical numbers, plus a side-splitting turn by Miguel Nunez as a young Little Richard. Major issues (such as '60s race relations) are barely glanced at, but what this film lacks in depth, it makes up for ten-fold in entertainment value. A winner!

The most interesting thing about the movie was the insider's look at a tortured artist after his popularity is gone. Frankie Lymon was Michael Jackson (of the Jackson 5 vintage) before Michael Jackson. The film never really brought out the fact that Frankie was 13 when he hit it big with the Teenagers (probably because the director didn't think Larenz Tate could pull it off). 3 wives fighting over his estate, mercurial rise and fall, and dead at 25, there is a good story here. The movie however falls a little short. I recommend with slight reservation.

An interesting (but flawed account) of the battle over pop star Frankie Lymon's estate by three women claiming to be his widow... The story portrayed here is actually semi-fictitious, but the background story of Frankie's life is entirely true. From his starts as a fresh-faced Harlem kid to a haunted drug addict, Larenz Tate (one of the most underrated talents in Hollywood) shines as dreamer Frankie, and does well to give perspective to Frankie's conflicting attitudes towards his relationships with the women, which the script muddles- Frankie appears shallow yet introspective at the same time. Halle Berry tries to make more of her understated and thin role as Zola Taylor, wifey no. 2, but provides an adequate performance. The most developed of the three female characters, is Elizabeth Waters (Viveca A. Fox). Loyal yet dishonest, gritty Elizabeth is the only character aside from Frankie that seems to be real. This is a combined effort by the characterisation and the performance by Fox. And Lela Rochon does very well cast against type, as a school marm dragged into this battle. Rochon clearly understands the character well, and manages to make her mark on the story despite being developed late into the film. The period detail of this piece is well captured over the 20-odd years that this story is set (particularly the performances of Frankie with the Teenagers), and even the small scenes which provide insight into Frankie's younger days. The main flaws of this film lie essentially in the struggle to develop some of the themes. As mentioned earlier, Frankie's reasons for bigamy are not established at all or how he copes this with this, or whether one of the wives in particular is lying about the legitimacy of her marriage. Some of the characterisation is a bit thin, caused by some of the later events of the film and because this deep story of fame, loss, betrayal and torment has such a muddled structure the whole film comes across as sketchy by the end which clearly was not intended. But never the less this is an adequate tribute, to the world of fame and its inevitable clingers-on, and those just caught up in the action. This will never be top of its genre however...