I liked it. A lot.
If you like the music of the Beatles (and if you don't, you might be trying too hard to be alternative and contrary), you pretty much have to like this film, because it's all about the Beatles - and not just their music. There are clear parellels between the lives of the characters and the life of the band, including a rooftop concert.
My one criticism (that the story starts too conventionally), admittedly, doesn't hold much water, as it makes perfect sense within the context of the Beatles. The Beatles started out like a dozen other bands, playing rhyme and blues riffs with silly, conventional lyrics. This is reflected in the story - boy travels to America to find his father; he meets a love and falls in love. As the 60s roll on, and the music of the Beatles becomes more experimental, Julie Taymor, the genius behind the live -action The Lion King, gets a chance to shine with shunning visuals and puppets.
I was a little apprehensive about how the music would be incorporated - Beatles' music tends to assume an iconic status, after all - but I was completely happy with how the songs were incorporated into the plot. At times, the new circumstances were interesting shifts ("I Wanna Hold Your Hand" as a song from a closeted lesbian cheerleader to another cheerleader); other times, new circumstances added a new depth to the song ("As My Guitar Gently Weeps" as an elegy for MLK Jr, or "Let it Be" as an anthem for the Detroit riots).
2 comments:
Hehe. Thanks Mike.
When I first heard the Beatles ("I Want to Hold Your Hand") I, too, thought they were just singing conventional lyrics. "She Loves You" changed my mind. The third-person advice song was not a brand new phenomenon, but it's still uncommon in the popular song, outside of the theatre. That was my first clue that something special was going on. Anyone listening to their first two hits in England ("Love Me Do" and "Please Please Me") would also have registered that the lyrics were slightly non-standard. And, oddly enough, so was the harmonica. Ah, Mike, you're so young! You don't remember this stuff. I was a kid, but I remember the impact, and with my hair thinning on top now I still wear it down over my forehead, a style I first adopted (much to my parents' chagrin) in 1964.
An aside: my wife still thinks the anthem for those Detroit riots is Gordon Lightfoot's "Black Day in July" (not his very best work, but his only overtly political work).
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