Across the Universe (2007) ***

Rating: 7/10 (17 February 2008)

Step back into retro 1968 for a very colorful and wondrous musical trip featuring today's young performers saluting The Beatles through their music. I must give credit to screenwriters Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais, as well as the director Julie Taymor for having more success in producing glowing results, especially when one recalls the disaster that was 1978's SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND.
This is a loose and meandering story of a young Liverpool artist named Jude (Jim Sturgess) who goes off to search for a father he never known somewhere in the U.S.A. He meets various characters named after certain Beatles songs and befriends them as they all go about their lives together amidst the outrage of the Vietnam war, "flower power" psychedelia trips, and love.
I just watched this myself on DVD last night along with my wife, my sister and her husband, and my 16-year-old nephew and his young girlfriend. Other than the sad fact that the kids first cringed at the sight of the movie being letterboxed and that they wanted it to be "the Full Screen" (sigh) it went over very well. Except for my 12-year-old niece, however, who kept retreating to her room and is at this point in her life a lost cause who prefers cRap and Britney Spears to good music. Well, I guess she'll see if anyone makes a movie featuring their stuff in 40 years time. I am a die-hard Beatles collector/freak, and yet I have never managed to sit through all of the SGT. PEPPER movie. I must admit that I went into ACROSS THE UNIVERSE with much trepidation, but I came out of it very exhilarated and with the satisfaction of feeling that there might be young teens out there in the modern world who were now made more aware of The Beatles' music where they wouldn't have thought they were cool enough before.
It's pretty much a futile exercise to attempt a whole coherent film and any sort of linear plot line when the whole idea of a movie is to tell a story using songs by a music group and characters conspicuously named after classic songs (like Jude, Jo Jo, Prudence, Sadie, Lucy, Max, etc.). There were some curious missed opportunities -- I kept wondering what the point was of having a character named Maxwell who was angry at his parents and was seen wielding a silver hammer, if not to use the song? Same thing with Sadie (who I wrongly presumed was going to be serenaded for being "sexy" and for "making a fool of everyone") and Jo-Jo was never told to "Get Back"!
But with ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, whatever must be found lacking in story is much more than made up for with creative cinematography and some great music at every other turn. I liked just about all of the new renditions of the classic old tunes and it was actually invigorating to hear them freshly sung by new (and some old) faces. I found myself eagerly anticipating what the next chestnut to be attempted was going to be and who would get to sing it. The vocalist who really hit me especially was the character Sadie's (Dana Fuch's) Janis Joplinesque rocking on songs like "Why Don't We Do It In The Road" and "Oh, Darling!" (even though the latter was sometimes hindered by the interruptions of Martin Luther McCoy). A couple of weak singing moments that stood out for me were the embarrassingly silly "Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite", by Eddie Izzard, as well as leading boy Jim Sturgess' softcore blabbering for "Revolution". Still, even these didn't hurt the movie as a whole. Oh, I might nitpick that a seasoned Beatles devotee like U2's Bono ought to be aware that the sounds which are barked in the classic "I Am the Walrus" are not the commonly misheard "Koo Koo Kachoo", but rather "Goo Goo G'joob", but this is desperate criticism. It was great to see him perform this psychedelic tune, and ditto for Joe Cocker croaking out the opening lines of "Come Together".
The memory of The Beatles is alive and well and made fresher than ever for a new youthful audience thanks to ACROSS THE UNIVERSE. *** out of ****