YESTERDAY (2019)

Rated:  PG-13

STARS: Himesh Patel, Lily James, Kate McKinnon, Ed Sheeran
DIRECTOR: Danny Boyle
GENRE: Comedy/ Romance/ Fantasy


What a pedigree this one has going in! It's directed by Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) and written by Jack Curtis (Love Actually, Notting Hill). Their hand prints are all over Yesterday, in the skillful way that Boyle builds dramatic tension layer by layer, and the way Curtis plays on our heartstrings with that sweet sappy love vibe. 

After a worldwide blackout during which he gets hit by a bus, struggling English musician Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) wakes up in a parallel universe where the Beatles didn't exist. He's the only one who remembers them. Malik has gone nowhere performing his own material, but he soon catches on that by learning and relearning the Beatles' songs from memory and claiming them as his own, folks are awe-struck. They've never heard anything like it. Literally. Now he's on the fast track to becoming a mega-star!

Along for the ride is his manager and childhood friend, Ellie (Lily James), who has believed in him through thick and thin. Ellie has harbored a secret passion for more than Jack's music, but has kept it under wraps all this time. With Jack's newfound fame, their bond will be sorely tested.

Yesterday makes some bold assumptions. The first being that you could separate the songs--as brilliant as they are--from The Fab Four themselves and have just any fairly competent singer perform them and that he would weave the same kind of magic and create the same unprecedented phenomenon as The Beatles themselves. (If that were true, Bing Crosby's rendition of "Hey Jude" would have been a chart topper!) No, it was all about John, Paul, George, and Ringo and who they were individually and collectively. And assuming that our younger generation of iPhone zombies--influenced by a lot of the garbage and the gangsta-rap crap that passes for music today would resonate with the innocent exuberance of an "I Want To Hold Your Hand" is the second big leap of faith. But without it, of course, you have no movie. So the willing suspension of disbelief has to kick in for you to enjoy Yesterday to the fullest. Still, it's good to hear all the old Beatles classics again, and watching the crowds go irrationally berserk for Jack and his music brings back golden memories of a sweeter day.

The cast features Kate Mckinnon in a funny turn as a corporate shrew who wants to ride Jack's wave for her own personal profit, and the real Ed Sheeran is here, playing himself, so the younger crowd--most of whom have no real grasp on what the Beatles' true legacy was--will at least have a contemporary musician they can identify with. 

Himesh Patel as Jack is an affable presence, and we are rooting for him for the most part, though we wonder if and when his conscience will get the best of him, and he will come clean about his deception. Lily James as Ellie is so vulnerable and sweet, I don't know why anybody wouldn't fall in love with her. And despite its flaws, you might fall in love with Yesterday too.

Grade:  B

JILL'S TAKE 


I enjoyed reading Tim's review a helluva a lot more than I did watching Yesterday. The creators, Jack Barth and Richard Curtis, obviously thought their brilliantly original concept (i.e. deleting The Beatles' existence) would carry this film. It did not. Not for me, anyway. So they tossed in a love story in case the audience didn't relate to all those classic Beatles' ditties.


And the constant repetition of being interrupted—while auditioning his 'latest song' for his non musical parents, trying to get romantic with his up-till-then platonic gal pal, attempting to ward off his Hollywood agent's unreasonable demands—got tiresome. Shakespeare did it with style. These guys simply overdid it.


I'll give the male lead Himesh Patel points for his vocal renderings. Especially his heartfelt version of "Yesterday." But I found it ironic that his character's last name Malik is similar to the real actor's last name Malek who played Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody. I'd say the latter performed g-clef circles around the former....


There were some really funny one-liners. But I had trouble deciphering a lot of the dialogue. Should I blame the actors? The sound engineer? Or my auditory abilities?
This was no Slumdog Millionaire. Lord knows, it tried to be. But that meandering script sunk the proverbial ship
Grade: C -

EIGHT DAYS A WEEK--THE TOURING YEARS

RATED: NR

STARS: The Beatles, Brian Epstein, Whoopi Goldberg, Elvis Costello
DIRECTOR: Ron Howard
GENRE: Documentary


There's not much you can criticize about a Beatles documentary (Eight Days A Week--The Touring Years) that showcases the music above everything else--directed by Ron Howard, no less! Howard and company worked some auditory magic with archival footage of live performances at clubs, concerts, and on television. The result is that you're immersed in the exhilarating feeling of being right there, live, in the front row.

And THERE THEY ARE--John and George--up there big as life...just as if they had never left us. The incongruity, of course, is that they are their forever younger selves, while present day Paul and Ringo drop by to fill us in on some of the intimate details of those touring years--1964 through 1966. 

The real eye-opener--for anyone who wasn't around at the time and has only heard about the craziness second hand--is that we get the full brunt of Beatlemania. Hordes of young girls going bananas, screaming their heads off and passing out and being lugged off like sacks of potatoes by dutiful cops to the recovery station. And everywhere the Fab Four went, the crowds mobbing them as they made a mad dash for the limousine. And then there is the concert in Shea Stadium where 56,000 people were so loud that the lads couldn't hear themselves, and yet they rocked out and delivered those songs without a hitch. They were that good.

Brian Epstein, the architect and engineer of the group's rise to musical immortality, is prominently featured. Whoopi Goldberg and Elvis Costello provide some personal anecdotes. Whoopi, for one, was a huge fan. And who wasn't? 

The documentary only briefly touches on the Beatles' psychedelically induced period that followed, which was beyond the scope of the film. But this was where the real "Revolution"started. Suddenly, music became a medium with a message, not just a beat. And so many of us grew up making personal transformations that paralleled the transformation in the Beatles' music. In a very real sense, they were the soundtrack to our lives.  

 Grade:  A

JILL'S TAKE

The night I went to see Eight Days A Week at La Paloma, a funky little theater (built in 1929) in Encinitas, California, it was packed with diehard Beatle fans. Mostly baby boomers, eager to relive their youth. But even if you weren't born back then, this documentary is more than just a musical tribute to the Fab Four. It's about a cultural phenomenon.

I don't usually share personal anecdotes when adding my two cents to these movie reviews. But this story deserves re-telling: I was living in New York City when the Beatles came to town and I had a good friend, a classy lady named Jackie Rutherfurd, whose 12-year-old daughter "Moo" was dying to go see the Beatles perform at Radio City Music Hall. Jackie begged me to accompany Moo, fearing for her daughter's life. I agreed to go, thinking Jackie was being a bit over dramatic. Believe me, she wasn't. The screaming and hysteria in that auditorium was truly terrifying. I couldn't wait to get out of there. (Moo, of course, was crying like all the other little girls, totally in love with Paul.)

Which brings me to my one criticism of the film. The Beatle I had a secret crush on was George Harrison. And I felt his musical talent was not featured enough in Eight Days A Week. Granted, his songs emerged later but still – he was a lot cuter to me than the other Beatles. (Sigh.)

When the film ended, people clapped long and loud; and when they left the theater, I swear they looked a good twenty to forty years younger.

Grade: A -