Two hours of bad Beatles covers

Rating: 2/10 (13 July 2015)

"Across the Universe" is like a bad Beatles cover band. It means well, tries hard, and plays the band's catalog with love in its heart - but it's a waste of time. At the end of the show, you find yourself wishing that you had stayed home and listened to the real thing.
Like most cover versions of Beatles songs, "Across the Universe" is awful, a poorly written and badly sung music video masquerading as a movie. The story is shallow, the characters paper-thin, and the musical numbers ridiculously over-the-top. That it drags some of the greatest pop music of the 20th century down with it just adds insult to injury.
The plot, if you must: Lucy, Jude, Maxwell, Sadie and Prudence (get it?) sing Beatles songs as they move along with the change and upheaval of the 1960s, with each song representing a key event of the times. They drop acid while singing "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". They tune in, turn on and drop out to "Revolution". They get drafted to "Happiness is a Warm Gun". Finally, as if there was any doubt, they realize that "All You Need is Love".
I wasn't there for the 1960s, so I can't say what those times were like for people coming of age in that moment of history. No one involved in this movie seems to know, either. The themes of the time - the anti-war movement, changing sexual mores, drug experimentation - are given such shallow treatment that they have no real resonance for the audience. It's as if the protagonists are standing outside of the world they live in, so apart from the scene that they could have walked in from another movie. They know the words, but not the music.
Wow, do they not know the music. The cast members are all technically proficient singers, but they put no feeling, no soul, into their renditions of Beatles songs. Jim Sturgess and Evan Rachel Wood, who play star-crossed lovers Jude and Lucy, sing "Strawberry Fields Forever" during a breakup scene, but with none of the loneliness that John Lennon put into every syllable. Joe Anderson, who plays Maxwell, sings "With a Little Help From My Friends" during a party sequence, but his rendition has none of the childlike joy that Ringo Starr brought to the original. Sturgess' "Happiness is a Warm Gun", sung while he unconvincingly shoots heroin, is so bad it's offensive.
Writer/director Julie Taymor makes each song into a ridiculously big set piece. The "Strawberry Fields" number has giant, papier-mache strawberries. "Happiness is a Warm Gun" is accompanied by Salma Hayek floating in a syringe. I don't think I can describe the "Why Don't We Do It In the Road?" number in a family-friendly blog.
Taymor is clearly a devoted Beatles fan, and works really hard to make her audience love these songs. Thing is, the band doesn't need her help. The Beatles are part of our cultural DNA; they don't need to be introduced to new generations, because they have been transcending generations for 50 years. Like a bad cover band, this movie has no reason to exist, and just makes us pine for the real thing.