"A strong pop film."

Rating: Null/10 (16 August 2004)

A look at the life of the top 1960's pop group, "The Beatles", on tour in 1964. Including how Ringo feels unnoticed compared to the others, Paul having to contend with his trouble making grandfather who is always stirring up trouble and contending with their manager Norm who frowns at their behaviour yet can't do without them at the same time.
During the 1960's, there was numerous pop films hitting our cinemas, but very few have stood the test of time like "A Hard Day's Night". The film includes plenty of the band's best music including two number one hit singles of the year, the title song and "Can't Buy Me Love". In most other pop movies of that era, many of them had songs which were written especially for the film, but all too often these were poor and didn't live up to the artists' hits. The boys also took to the film extremely well with their own unique brand of caddish wit. The script by Alan Owen is stronger than one would expect for this sort of thing and a better than average director in Richard Lester was chosen to direct the picture. Good supporting cast includes Wilfred ("Steptoe And Son") Brambell as Paul's grandfather. In the mid-1990's, "The Spice Girls", were being hyped as the female equivalent of the fab four but they lasted less than half the time that the boys did before they finally disbanded in 1970. The girls released their own film in 1997, "Spiceworld: The Movie", which attempted to copy "A Hard Day's Night", but it failed miserably and it failed to exploit their music to the same degree that the former did. In common with the girls themselves, I am extremely doubtful that "Spiceworld" will achieve the classic status that "A Hard Day's Night" has in the past forty years since it was first released and also I doubt if the "Spice Girls" will be remembered to the same degree that the fab four are in forty years time.