Bloody awful

Rating: 1/10 (25 August 2008)

I found this movie very underwhelming. I just couldn't like it. I just watched it on DVD with my 21 year old daughter and we both just sat there like...what the hell? It seemed promising at the very beginning, but it just didn't go anywhere. It's like someone took a bunch of Beatles song titles, threw them in a hat and then randomly picked a bunch out. Then they sat and said to themselves, " Okay, let's try to make some kinda story to stick in between these songs." Sure, the visuals are stunning. But that's it. The so called plot is paper thin and there's no continuity to it really. And the character! None of them were developed in any way, shape or form. They were one dimensional and I couldn't care one little bit about any of them. The character of Prudence was completely unneeded. She added nothing to the pitiful story. Why was she even there? She disappears without explanation for a while and them just sorta shows up again. It was weird. I did enjoy some of the songs. A few were decent versions. Other songs, however, were just awful. So many of them were slowed down so much it was painful to sit through. I couldn't even be impressed with the dancing, which for the most part, I found awful. This movie seemed to take forever to be over. I'm not even sure why we continued to watch it. Perhaps it was a morbid curiosity to see how the heck the damned thing was going to finally end.
I was surprised when I came on this site to see what others thought of Across the Universe. I'd been thinking...surely it's not just me and my daughter who didn't like it. Her friend raved about how great it was when he gave us the DVD to watch. So many people on here loved it. I kept reading and found the ones, who like me, didn't like it. For the most part, it seems that people either loved it or hated it. The ones who were in between seemed to enjoy the music, visuals and dance, but were unimpressed with plot and characters. For me, the visuals weren't enough to make this a good movie. I can't possibly recommend it.