Saturday, September 29, 2007

IMAGES OF BROKEN LIGHT WHICH DANCE BEFORE ME LIKE A MILLION EYES...

Ladies and gentlemen, presenting the only review that matters of the new Beatles-themed motion picture called Across The Universe. WOOHOO! I'll keep it short & sweet because as you all know, I hate The Beatles! MAY LIGHTNING STRIKE ME FOR EVEN MAKING SUCH A JOKE ABOUT MY BOYS! ACK!

Anyhowzen, the story and general plotline was really poor. Weak, weak, weak, and did I say WEAK?! Yeah, just a cheap superficial overview of the 1960s with no real substance. Kind o' disappointing. Heck, The Wonder Years did a much better job of capturing the decade, but I guess it's harder for this 130-minute movie to do so than what that classic TV show was able to do every week. The beginning of the film shows great promise, then it kind of starts falling flat and gets a wee bit irritating by the time the Vietnam War protesting goes into overdone mode; some of the songs also seemed out of place and just thrown in at times which kinda left me a bit puzzled.

With all that being said, some of the visuals in this film are quite enjoyable and very well done! Look at the colors man! TRIPPY! I also really enjoyed some cameo appearances by some pretty big stars/celebrities that I was not expecting. They were all quite good in their individual scenes, which made the movie quite fun. Some of the Beatles covers were nicely done too, and I found myself tapping my foot and humming along here and there.

So yes the movie is flawed, but director Julie Taymor still manages to pull it off somehow with some nice casting and decent acting/singing from all.

If anything, this film reiterates just how important and glorious the music by The Beatles continues to be.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure about seeing this, based on the reviews. I adore Taymore's work (especially TITUS) but your review kind of sums up what everyone is saying. Maybe it'll be a video rental for me.

M- Filer said...

Since you are the foremost authority on the Beatles I will take your word to be gospel. I think I'll skip it.

...I do like trippy visuals however

Gavin Elster said...

It didn't cause you to punch the first person you saw after the lights came up? Thats a good thing. I can't see it yet. I need to get stoned and take a few zanex before seeing this. I'm still full of rage from hearing this thing was getting made.

Ladrón de Basura (a.k.a. Junk Thief) said...

Oh, those Beatles. They so wanted to be Air Supply but just didn't have the stuff.

Gavin Elster said...

Thems fightin' words Garbage Robber!

WAT said...

AHAHHAHAHHAHAHAH! COUGH!

Scot said...

I would like to see this for the imagery. Most accounts have been similar to what you are saying, and if the visuals are relly that great, then it's something to see on the big screen. I'm usually more of a "wait for the DVD" kind of guy (Or even more so, wait until someone lends me the DVD) but occationally something comes along that requires the big screen an auditorium sound.