I had a terrible 'across the universe' flashback (no drugs involved!)

Rating: 3/10 (21 October 2006)

I saw this movie's screening about a month ago and had completely blocked the experience from my mind this morning until i was listening to Abbey Road.
It would be cruel to call "Across the Universe" a two hour music video because it tries so hard to be more than that, but it wouldn't be entirely inaccurate either. The movie can be summed up as a series of punctuated scenes and characters each represented by a Beatles song and strung together by a boilerplate love story.
Of course, these criteria don't preclude the movie from being a true gem. But the real failing of any music video is the inability to explore beyond the literal meaning of a song. Of course, in an ideal world all directors re-imagine an established song or leverage both its nuance and cultural weight. In the best of cases, a movie allows music to transcend its established history. In the worst of cases, music is exploited for its most superficial meaning. Sadly, too often, Across the Universe is guilty of the latter.
Unfortunately, any negative review of this movie may seem like a 'book' vs 'movie' comparison. Surely if "the movie's never as great as the book," a movie that utilizes culturally loaded music is equally likely to disappoint. My complaint isn't that "Across the Universe" is unable to explore the depths of Beatles universe because the movie never tries. If you could distill any Beatles song to its most literal meaning, while ignoring all subtlety, then you'd probably make this movie too. Accordingly, the best scenes in the movie were detached from the story and simply indulgent celebrations of the music, full of Taymor's aesthetic.
Which brings me back to the summary of this review -- while listening to Abbey Road this morning, Across the Universe all came rushing back and I felt half the album being taken from me. In listening to half of the songs on the album, I was reminded of the predictable and superficial renditions of angsty teens bemoaning lost love, while the other unused half remained as a reminder of the depth of the Beatles' music.