Release Date:
09/14/2007
Something that would be a bad idea for an off-Broadway concept show has been inexplicably turned into a bloated two-hour-and-11-minute movie musical strung around a group of classic Beatles tunes. Director Julie Taymor (Frida), who brought The Lion King to life onstage, has taken 33 of the Fab Four's tunes (now conveniently co-owned by Sony, which produced) and turned them into fodder for a ridiculous love story set against the turbulent years of antiwar protests in the '60s. Jude is a young lad from Liverpool just hitting American shores who gets involved with a group of friends being swept up in the counterculture movements of the time. Among them is a girl, Lucy, who he falls hard for, even as a tidal wave of events slowly rip them apart when her brother is shipped off to Vietnam. Thrown into the mix are Bono as Dr. Robert and Eddie Izzard as Mr. Kite, and some dreary dance numbers set in, among other places, an army induction center and a bowling alley. This movie, along with the 1978 Bee Gees' disaster Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, ought to convince Paul McCartney never to sell his songs to anyone again. Unless, of course, he loves the thought of seeing a high school cheerleader absolutely destroy "I Want to Hold Your Hand" or Salma Hayek, decked out as a nurse, dancing to "Happiness Is a Warm Gun." The lead actors, who include the normally reliable Evan Rachel Wood as Lucy, are terribly miscast in a movie that probably would have made a decent theme show for American Idol—and nothing more.