Great music, bad story.

Rating: 10/10 (30 March 2009)

The Beatles songbook is full of classics, but unfortunately I felt the value of many of those songs were greatly diminished in this simple, messy love story. Other than the music and a talented young cast, there was nothing exceptional about this film. Without the music, it would have been lucky to get 4 stars. Despite the film being over 2 hours long, several characters and plot points are left unexplored. This is most likely due to the fact that so many scenes were stuck in there for the sake of getting another song in, but added absolutely nothing to the plot. This really could have been so much better if more time were spent to develop the stories. It felt like every time there was a glimpse of real content and substance, in came a pointless scene that just confuses you more. There are touching moments, and I understand how hard it is to create a good musical with songs that weren't written to be a part of one, but if you're going to have such a simple plot, at least try and put in some depth and originality within it...