Visually original and energetic musical

Rating: 8/10 (27 July 2008)

Now I am not normally a fan of musicals. But I do like Beatles songs. And the way they present them will have them stuck in your head for days. Jim Sturgess and Joe Anderson are very appealing male leads and Evan Rachel Wood is a fine actress, not to mention pretty damn easy on the eyes. The singing was very good and the choreography was fantastic. The production is quite sumptuous as was the cinematography by Bruno Delbonnel. Julie Taymor and her team went ape with the production and milk it for all its worth. It gives it a good feel of the changing era but at the same time gives it a certain fantasy element.
On the storyline front, I liked that they managed to weave a love story and the darkening of this country's ethics into this. That is most definitely a story that these songs could have told. Unfortunately, not enough time is spent on the supporting characters and towards the middle, the whole Eddie Izzard sequence was just too damn weird even for my tastes. But fortunately, it picks up again and drives home the tragedy of the Vietnam War and how it tore apart this country.
Now if you are very liberal about your artistic tastes and believes that visuals can speak just as well as words then this will give you a good tribute to the freedom of the 60s.