Across the Universe

During the early days of The Beatles they released three movies, a cartoon show, a documentary about their unraveling and music that changed the world of rock and roll. Undeniably the most influential band on modern rock, The Beatles are legendary. always turning out good work and breaking up before they had a chance for things to go down hill.

Then, in the late 80's the rights of the songs fell out of the hands of McCartney and the rest of The Beatles and found themselves into the hands of Michael Jackson. MJ is fast for selling any Beatle song anybody wants to use very cheaply. This made it easy for Julie Taymor (Director of "Titus", "Frida" and the stage version of "The Lion King") to make this movie which is all about how many "Beatles" songs you can cram into one movie.

The plot is Jude (Jim Sturgess) is from Liverpool, London and he comes to America to find his dad. Ends up his dad is a janitor at Princeton. At Princeton Jude meets Max (Joe Anderson), a fun loving American who hates the war. Max has a sister named Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood) who hates the war as well. Jude and Lucy fall in love once Lucy, Max and Jude move into an apartment with Sadie(Dana Fuches), JoJo (Martin Luther) and Prudence (T.V. Carpio) in New York. Max gets drafted into Vietnam. From there the plot goes all wackey with Drugs, Vietnam protests, Sadie going single from her band and one Beatles song after another.

The plot is no what matters in this film at all though. The usual case is that we get about a minute or two long scene and then another song. Now, this is would not necessarily be a bad thing if the story did have every cliche of the '60's. In fact, that doesn't even make it bad. What happens is that you only connect to your actors the way you connect to a cover band: it is okay, but you want the real thing. This has been the fundamental problem of all other Beatles movies: they have been disjointed with very little substance because they are all just built around the songs. Characters are named after songs and are in there literally for one song (Prudence) or the story will take a turn into the useless for another song (Mr. Kite).

The acting in this is fairly normal. Sadly, none of the two leads stick out and are the least interesting characters in the entire movie. Joe Anderson as Max is actually very charismatic and has the best singing song out of Jude, Lucy and him. He brings out the feelings every song is trying to get at. Most notably is "With A Little Help From My Friends" and "Happiness is a Warm Gun." The two best singers in the movie are given only two or three songs: Martin Luther as Jojo and Dana Fuches as Sadie (who isn't that sexy, but has an awesome voice). These two are rock stars and kick ass in their songs. Their duet during the break up of their band is the most energetic part of the film that actually works. Luther's rendition of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" was the 2nd best part of the film and is show stopping since it is all accustic and his vocals are so soft and sweet, just how the song is supposed to be. Fuches does a really really kick ass version of "Why Don't We Do It In The Road" and "Helter Skelter." The person who really stole this film for me though was, surprisingly, Bono as Ken Kasey with a different name. He sings "I Am The Walrus" and the rest of the sequence just... kicks ass and is the high light of the film and it also marks the moment the movie starts going down hill because it is immediately followed by Eddie Izzard's "Mr. Kite" which is undeniably a trip visually, but it is an absolute terrible cover. I didn't even recognize the song until I made out that he said the words "Mr. Kite." This is the moment the movie kicks it to just wanting it to be the visuals.

The visuals are mixed between two things: the music and the dialouge. The dialouge has no feeling to the camera. It drops dead. There is nothing original there. She does the basic "point the camera and shoot" technique or she re-creates a beatles album cover for a laugh. Then there is her visuals during the music. She undeniably has an eye for this sort of stuff as every visual is tantilizing to the eye, if challenging to the brain. The problem with her visuals is that they can become comical or it has nothing to do with the song, and she just thought the visuals synched up well with the beat of the song. Truthfully, the song that most shows her pluses and her minuses is the "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" sequence. It starts out amazing strong. A terrifiying visual of Uncle Sam reaching out to Max singing "I WANT YOU!" then he gets pulled inside for training and it is the same drill sergent for everyone and they all have very goofy makeup on and I couldn't help but laugh. I mean, it is terrible when you try to make the visuals for a song that she wants to be slow and moving and people start to laugh at it, of course, they could have been laughing at her complete lack of knowledge about what the song is ("I Want To Hold Your Hand"). Then there are her amazing sequences: I AM THE WALRUS. She literally takes us through an LSD trip. Bono starts off normally and then the visuals of his body start lagging behind where he is in real space, then he becomes all negative. It is an awesome trip and a really cool scene.

But for all of the good covers, there are 2 or 3 bad covers or songs that have no use other than to be there. For a great example of a terrible cover is the rendition of "I Want To Hold Your Hand" which she decided to turn into a slow emotional song and it just doesn't work. The other terrible cover is "Mr. Kite" while Eddie Izzard has never disappointed me, I hated this sequence and it just pissed me off. "Dear Prudence" isn't a bad cover, but it is a terrible sequence that just wastes time on a useless character. Pretty much, any time it focuses on Prudence it is useless. Another sequence that was stupid/cliched was the "Hey Jude" sequence which we had been waiting for the entire movie ended up... being just another musical sequence.

The Beatles always had bad taste in movies if their films accurately show what they liked in this film and the worst criticism that I could probably give it is that it is a film that the Beatles would have liked: aka very bright and crazy colors and something to look at while tripping.