One of the best songs by the Beatles I think, but now also a movie with only Beatle-songs in it, it turns out. Last week, I watched this film and still I am not too sure what I need to think of it. The film portrays the story of a young fellow Jude moving from Liverpool to New York in the late 60s, getting involved in the hippy community, student protests against the Vietnam War and finally, how could it be different in the ‘All you need is love’ spirit of the Beatles, falling in love with one of the hippie women, Lucie.
First, I thought the film just used Beatle-songs performed by John, Paul, George and Ringo themselves as background music, but it turned out to be a musical-like flick with the actors singing the songs, backed up by new compositions of the music. In my opinion, trying to portray the songs in a similar or better way than the Beatles, is one of the most difficult things one can do in music. The vocal lines and the music itself, especially in their later period, is just of a genious quality. Additionally, Beatles songs are still played every day, and thus very much established, therefore changing them too much might lead to critiques easily.
So when I found out the actors where singing themselves, my feelings about it were immediately mixed, although I must say the creators of the film (and the new compositions) did quite a good job with a lot of songs; trying to modernise the music a bit, but still adhere somewhat to the original atmosphere or style of the song. Conversely, some of the songs were a complete disaster. Really, one thing that I realised after viewing this film is that they should forbid Bono to sing Beatle songs, if not forbid him to sing altogether…arggg I was just outraged by his feeble voice trying to sing one of the lyrics; he provided the perfect example of the fear I wrote about above. Another thing I wasn’t to sure about was the musical-like quality of the film, song after song followed and this might have been a little less dense, some more normal conversations, a bit more attention to the story, and a lot less cheesy musical dancing choreography. However, I would still advise you to go and see this movie, just because the Beatles and their songs, in what form their songs are put, are just awesome. Oh and one last thing…all characters in the film are giving names from beatles songs, quite nice 