Bob Dylan Experts Embrace Timothée Chalamet and Praise His Singing Voice After ‘A Complete Unknown’ Trailer: ‘Even the Most Cynical Fans Will Be Excited Now’

variety.com:

Ethan Shanfeld The odds were stacked against Timothée Chalamet long before those set photos trickled online. By just signing up to play Bob Dylan in James Mangold’s forthcoming bio-drama “A Complete Unknown,” the 28-year-old megastar willingly placed himself in the crosshairs of Dylan’s most devoted fans — who, let’s be honest, are not easily impressed.

When paparazzi pics of Chalamet dressed in character seeped onto social media, the response was largely negative. Dylan fanatics, or Dylanologists as they self-identify, lost faith in the project and picked apart every detail of Chalamet’s Greenwich Village getup, and a photo of the actor wrapped in an enormous (and rather hideous) scarf quickly became meme fodder.

But then the trailer came out, offering a two-minute glimpse of Mangold’s vision set to Chalamet’s rousing rendition of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” and cynical skepticism seemed to morph into cautious optimism. (In “The Times They Are A-Changin,’” didn’t Dylan himself warn “writers and critics who prophesize with your pen” to not “speak too soon for the wheel’s still in spin”?) As expressed in a dozen separate interviews with Variety after the “A Complete Unknown” trailer launch, some of the world’s preeminent Dylan experts — including authors, critics, scholars and podcast hosts — were taken by Chalamet’s commitment to the role, and largely impressed by his singing voice.

And while many of them still have reservations, they acknowledge that they aren’t the target audience for “A Complete Unknown,” and there is a seemingly unanimous enthusiasm about the fact that Chalamet will introduce legions of young people to Bob Dylan.