I just saw it. Now, I'm as huge of a Beatles fan as any, however I thought the film was average at best. I thought some of the Beatles covers were just awful, like they were super-polished American Idol versions of classic, garagey Beatles songs or something. The versions that didn't suffer as much were the older Beatles songs in my opinion, because I never liked the really early stuff. I think "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" sounds way better as an acoustic ballad. Anyway, it was definitely beautifully filmed though -- and it would of course be one of my top picks for films to watch on psychedelics.
I do love musicals provided they're done correctly. Believe it or not, there's a way to make a musical not cheesy (some would say the cheese is part of the appeal, but I disagree). Hedwig And The Angry Inch proved that. I felt a lot of the musical scenes felt forced, and a few felt quite extraneous to the overall plot. It felt like there were a few Beatles songs they really wanted to include, but didn't know how to properly integrate them into the story, so they felt tacked on. The Mr. Kite sequence is an example (although it's still pretty cool, especially because it's Eddie Izzard), as well as Prudence when she's in the closet. Also, a good musical needs an interesting and original plot to back up the music scenes -- the film can't rely on the music entirely. This film doesn't exactly do the latter, but it doesn't do the former very well either. The plot reminded me of a condensed version of that miniseries The Sixties. It was trite -- I just felt like I'd seen it all before, the good kids getting sucked into the hippie drug culture and the free speech movement and the war in Vietnam.
It was all right. It was also a little too gimmicky.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
