Music: Great, Acting: Great, Story: Eh...

Rating: 6/10 (8 October 2007)

I'm interested in the range of comments on this movie... from 'incredible... moved me to tears' to 'not artsy... worst movie ever'. I can see both extremes as far as the ratings go. I've seen the movie twice and would see it again in a heartbeat. However, I would like to say that the reason for this is the music... and, very sadly, only the music. Obviously, the songs they chose for the movie were amazing, and I thought most of the remakes, while not surpassing the originals in excellence (with the exception of Helter Skelter- Dana Fuchs does an absolutely SUPERB job with the remake), are very, very good in their own right and definitely deserve a listen.
****SPOILERS****
Sadly, the movie is greatly lacking elsewhere. The acting is great (huge Rachel Evan Wood fan and I thought that Jim Sturgess was great in this), but the story doesn't really go anywhere. Basically, it takes over 2 hours to tell the story: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back, boy and girl are assumed to live happily ever after. There are side stories thrown in but they are poorly developed. For instance, we see a snapshot of a civil rights sort of protest/ revolt/something like that (it's not clarified well) in what we can assume is the segregated south, during which a young African American boy is singing "let it be" and, during the song, we see him lying in a coffin, apparently having been killed in the riot. This is used as the reason Martin Luther McCoy's character moves to New York. However, we don't really know how he knew the boy, if at all. He was at the funeral, but the boy is not mentioned again in the movie and, with the exception of a few "deep" lines muttered by Luther's character about music being the only thing left in the world that makes sense, we don't get the idea that he experienced a significant loss. As far as the choreography/cinematography... I'd say it's average. I think that parts were great (Strawberry Fields Forever, I Want You) but some were horribly overdone (I've Just Seen A Face, Hey Jude).
Basically, I'd say this movie is worth watching because it has its strong points- I think this is a good point to mention the amazing performance by Bono. However, consider this a warning to anyone who is expecting to go into this film and see a deep, well developed, eye- opening plot, because it's just not there.