Yesterday (2019)
Directed by Danny Boyle
A struggling musician realizes he's the only person on Earth who can remember The Beatles after waking up in an alternate reality where the group was forgotten.
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This movie's funniest moments find Jack “debuting” tunes such as “Let It Be” — or, as a well-meaning listener mistakenly calls it, “Leave It Be” — and “Hey Jude,” which Ed Sheeran, playing himself, persuades him to change to “Hey Dude."
Suddenly, he's trying to remember the words to "Eleanor Rigby" and "Let it Be".
And would such ’60s songs as “Let It Be” and “Hey Jude,” detached from the social revolution of which they were a part, have the same impact in a 2019 universe where hip-hop exists but The Beatles do not?
Perhaps one day, we’ll get a Beatles movie worthy of standing up to the likes of A Hard Day’s Night or even Help!, but Yesterday is nearly as bad as all of its predecessors.
Most of the supposed joy of “Yesterday” is squeezed from the elbow-in-the-ribcage references to the Fab Four, both in song cues and visual references (like when Jack is chased by fans, a la “A Hard Day’s Night”).
Whether it be films they starred in ( A Hard Day’s Night), films about them ( Nowhere Boy) or films inspired by them ( Across The Universe), their influence is undeniable.
A survey of the greatest hits, it forgets what has made those hits so great despite cheeky references to Yellow Submarine and A Hard Day’s Night .
No “Yellow Submarine,” no “Day Tripper,” no “Eleanor Rigby.”
Working with cinematographer Christopher Ross, the screen pops and is brought to life in a similar fashion as Yellow Submarine.
A survey of the greatest hits, it forgets what has made those hits so great despite cheeky references to Yellow Submarine and A Hard Day’s Night .
It’s difficult to get too bent out of shape about reality while you’re humming “Yellow Submarine” or “Strawberry Fields.”
To know that, all you have to do is see the title sequence of “A Hard Day’s Night,” which electrifies you from its opening THRUM!!! , or (in the same film) the Beatles blasting the sonic bliss of “I Should Have Known Better” from inside a train storage compartment, or the sublime melting psychedelia of the “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” flying-damsel fantasia from “Yellow Submarine,” or Paul gazing into the camera as he delivers the hymn-like rapture of the title song from “Let It Be.”
Beatles music is offered in every stripe of venue, from living rooms to small stages to recording studios big and small to a referential rooftop to the film's Wembly Arena climax, but not much has been done to make it fresh with the exception of the desperation and angry energy Patel gives to "Help!" (Nor, for that matter, is any effort made to analyze any difference in reception fifty years would make.)
), Jack in the recording studio performing an amped-up montage of tracks from “Meet the Beatles,” Jack turning “Help!” into a speedy punk anthem, Jack’s running attempt to piece together the lyrics of “Eleanor Rigby.”
And Patel, who does all his own singing, also does these famous songs justice (his rendition of "Help!," taken at punk-rock velocity, is a worthy footnote to the original track).
When Jack straps on an electric guitar and performs a sizzling rendition of “Help!” the feeling is exhilarating.
That the Beatles songs were full of surprises, of pain and doubt instead of just sunshine, is something that Yesterday only acknowledges when Jack performs a live “Help!” that actually has some conviction as a cri de coeur (even if his backing band does make it sound more like a middling Lemonheads number).
Every time we hear “In My Life” or a rocking “Help!” or “I Want to Hold Your Hand” we say, “That sure is a great song” and forget for a moment that the movie is not very good.
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As Beatles jukebox musicals with people other than the Beatles singing the songs go- and its flaws notwithstanding- "Yesterday" is a significant improvement over 2007's "Across the Universe."
And unlike its contemporary, Across the Universe , the film never comes off as an attempt to fully recapture the spirit of the Beatles and what their songs truly mean in context.
Instead, I was left confused, thinking of all the songs they didn’t bother including, and asking myself why I suddenly wanted to go home and watch Across the Universe instead.
Now, Brothers was produced by Danger Mouse, who launched his production career with The Grey Album , a 2004 mash-up of music from The White Album with vocals from Jay-Z’s The Black Album , which was itself a reference to The White Album .
Por su parte, Richard Curtis es el responsable de filmes como 4 Weddings and a Funeral, Bridget Jones, Notting Hill, Love Actually y varios filmes de Mr. Bean.
With that promising set-up, a screenplay from the crown prince of sentimental storytelling Richard Curtis (“Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Notting Hill,” “Love, Actually”) and directed by the electrically talented Danny Boyle (“Trainspotting,” “Slumdog Millionaire,” “28 Days Later”), the jukebox musical drama/comedy “Yesterday” was atop the charts of my most anticipated movies of the Summer of 2019.
With a screenplay by Richard Curtis ("Love Actually," "Notting Hill"), the focus is on the relationship between Jack and Ellie and it's a bit light in the loafers.
Yesterday is written by Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Life Actually) so no surprise that the romantic leads are nothing if not moral, dedicated and sweet.
There’s some Notting Hill in the way protagonist Jack Malik’s (a likeable Himesh Patel) frumpy parents are oblivious about a celebrity (Ed Sheeran) in their house.
Some will claim that “Yesterday,” the new film by Danny Boyle, written by Richard Curtis (“Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Notting Hill”), turns on a plot axis so untenable that the whole picture collapses around it.
The idea also inspired the greatest movie ever made, Jean-Luc Godard’s “King Lear,” a fantasy from 1987 in which the world’s great art has been lost as a result of Chernobyl.
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Por su parte, Richard Curtis es el responsable de filmes como 4 Weddings and a Funeral, Bridget Jones, Notting Hill, Love Actually y varios filmes de Mr. Bean.
The script’s from Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually), and like a lot of his work, it’s funny and fleet of foot, but a bit flimsy when you start examining it closely.
With that promising set-up, a screenplay from the crown prince of sentimental storytelling Richard Curtis (“Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Notting Hill,” “Love, Actually”) and directed by the electrically talented Danny Boyle (“Trainspotting,” “Slumdog Millionaire,” “28 Days Later”), the jukebox musical drama/comedy “Yesterday” was atop the charts of my most anticipated movies of the Summer of 2019.
With a screenplay by Richard Curtis ("Love Actually," "Notting Hill"), the focus is on the relationship between Jack and Ellie and it's a bit light in the loafers.
Imagine a world in which the Beatles never existed and you'll get the high concept behind this comedy from the rather unlikely team of screenwriter Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually) and director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire), both 62.
Your enjoyment of this one is going to depend on just how much ludicrousness and laziness you can put up with in Richard "Love Actually" Curtis's screenplay, one which removes all traces of the Beatles unless it becomes inconvenient to his plot, one which celebrates the meeting of its romcom pairing over 'Wonderwall' only to wipe out Oasis, one which throws together characters from Moscow and Liverpool with no explanation whatsoever as to how they would have met and one which apparently knows nothing about the music industry or basic human sense.
As the head of marketing at the record label Jack becomes attached to, Lamorne Morris has a long monologue about potential album covers that’s meant to have an impact similar to that of the diatribe Ned Beatty delivered in “Network,” but though the actor registers strongly, the jokey speech itself doesn’t come close to matching Chayefsky’s.