Astonishing and brilliant (but skip Bono and Izzard)

Rating: Null/10 (10 February 2012)

Despite some serious flaws, I gave this movie ten stars because the best scenes (and there are many) are the most exciting musical scenes in the 80+ year history of sound movies. A few of the most memorable examples are listed below.
The intro: Jim Sturgess singing "Girl" straight into the camera, inviting us into this strange and haunting movie, and much later singing the beautiful title song in a crowded subway car.
Joe Anderson singing "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" as a bedridden patient in a veterans' hospital, in the most brilliantly choreographed and produced musical scene ever filmed.
Sturgess singing a joyous, exhilarating "I've Just Seen a Face" - in a bowling alley, of all places - in the second most brilliantly choreographed and produced musical scene ever filmed.
Sturgess, Anderson, and a handful of playful Princeton frat brothers singing "With a Little Help from My Friends" as they tumble and leap like gazelles over the furniture, through a crowded bar, across a rooftop, down a huge marble staircase and out into the quad, in the THIRD most brilliant... etc.
Joe Cocker (thank God he's still around!) singing "Come Together" as Lennon must have dreamed it could be sung: sleazy and gutsy and oiling its way under your skin, as he growls in time to the languid windshield wipers of a bus, then appears as a panhandler in a bathrobe in the bus terminal, then as a Times Square pimp driving a mile-long white 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz convertible; then the scene slides into 27 seconds of the most astonishing movie choreography ever: hundreds of dancers on a sunlit midtown sidewalk; and it finishes in the Village with Cocker again, this time as an aged hippie with long Stephen Stills blond hair. Wow.
As I said, there are many great scenes; those are just the cream of the cream. BUT (and unfortunately this is a BIG but) the so-bad-you-want-to-strangle-somebody scenes abound too; fortunately, they are easy to skip over. ANYTIME you see either Eddie Izzard or Bono anywhere on screen (and you quickly learn which scenes they are in), skip to the next scene on the DVD. I don't know how to say how bad those two are - except that they are as bad as Cocker is good - and their scenes add nothing to the movie.
The many great scenes make watching this movie pure delight; just keep your thumb on the remote and your eye peeled for Bono and Izzard.
(PS: I never liked The Beatles until I saw this movie.)