Mixed Feelings

Rating: 6/10 (3 October 2007)

I've just seen the movie, and I came out with very mixed feelings.
I think that in this day and age, the traditional "movie musical", where folks keep suddenly bursting into song at odd moments, no longer works. "Chicago" dealt with this problem by putting all the musical numbers into fantasy sequences. "Moulin Rouge" made the whole film look more like a stage play then a movie. Because film has a tendency to "literalize"--in real life I can't walk down a street singing a Beatles song and then suddenly find all the passersby joining in. I think in "Across the Universe" often the musical numbers worked better when the characters were actually performing on stage, or tripping on drugs. But usually (not always, but usually) it seemed awkward when at other times the characters would just start singing in their "normal life". There were times towards the beginning of the film when the songs were so embarrassing I felt like walking out, but gradually the film pulled me in after I stuck with it.
Yes, every character is named after a Beatles song. Every time I heard a character's name, I cringed. Because I was afraid that somehow they were going to try to incorporate all those songs into the plot. Thankfully, the only two of these "name" songs that are actually sung are "Dear Prudence" and, yes, "Hey Jude". And these two were not too badly performed (although "Hey Jude" does seem to have all the inhabitants of a Liverpool neighborhood joining in, but at least we are spared too many of the "Nahs"). Additionally, they save "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" for the closing credits.
Covering a song is always difficult, because there is always going to be a comparison with the original performance. And sometimes the film's songs are far shot of the original, but sometimes the cover version is quite successful. I think that Eddie Izzard's performance of "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite", which basically becomes a Taymor-designed-and-directed music video, may have been worth the price of admission itself. Bono's cover of "I am the Walrus" is also a high point--Bono also sings "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" in the closing credit. But, for example, I thought the performance of "I want you/she's so heavy" to be a low point, the "I want you" sung by Uncle Sam and caricatured recruiting sergeants (who "want" the young men for Vietnam), the "she's so heavy" referring to Lady Liberty (!).
This has all the characters you expect to find in a film set in the Hollywood version of "the sixties". There is the kid who drops out of college to move to Greenwich village, there is the bohemian artist, there is the guitarist strongly reminiscent of Jimmy Hendrix, the female singer who I think is supposed to at least slightly suggest Janis Joplin, there is more than one young man who is drafted to Vietnam, (with the obligatory "medical examination" scene) there is the daughter of middle class parents protesting the war, plus one or two drug gurus reminiscent of Timothy Leary. In some ways, there are too many characters to give them all proper development and still have room for the songs. I would have liked to know a lot more about the character of "Prudence" who seems to have an interesting story of her own, that we are told very little about. Also the relationship between the characters played by Dana Fuchs and Martin Luther McCoy was not very detailed.
Plus the usual supporting cast of assorted war protesters, hippies, beatniks, soldiers in Vietnam, and phalanxes of policemen. There is marijuana and LSD, together with the obligatory imagery that feels like a groovy acid trip, and imagery that feels like a really bad acid trip. We've seen it all before, and I don't know that this film has anything new to tell us about this period of history.
Go see the film just because some of the performances of Beatles songs are quite good, I thought that although Fuchs and McCoy weren't given much to do with their characters they both did a good job of making the songs they were given "their own". But you will have to also sit through some performances that are almost painful. Maybe your choices about best songs and worst songs will be different from mine, but I don't think anyone will leave saying that the film maintains a consistent high quality throughout.