A trip down memory lane for Beatles fans, and what a trip!

Rating: Null/10 (4 March 2008)

When people of the "Beatles generation" (including this one) watched "Mama Mai", they must be asking themselves if you can build a musical around ABBA's songs, imagine what you can do with the Beatles'. Well, here's the answer to their..er..prayer.
"Across the universe" is a rhapsody of music to Beatles fans. Over thirty Beatles songs are beautifully presented in a variety of style  male and female vocal, heavenly harmonizing, accompanied (unplugged, piano and rock band) and a cappella, rousing gospel (guess which one).
Built on the music are two stories, one macro and one micro. The backdrop story is the US social revolution in the 60s and early 70s with the anti Vietnam War movement in the foreground. The personal story evolved around a bohemian household in New York comprising of people from various geographical, social, racial and cultural background. At the very centre of it is an often-told love story of boy meets girl, boy losses girl and boy gets girl back. Some critics fault the first for not having sufficient depth and the second for banality. These criticisms can be argued to no end. I went essentially, if not entirely, for the Beatles and couldn't have been happier even though so many songs were missing. But out of over 200, what can you do?
That's not all. There is also the sumptuous feast of colour and images from Julie Taymor whose rich background in stage (particularly operas) art direction shows only too clearly in this movie.
On the cast, you can almost say it is an ensemble  there are about a half-dozen significant supporting roles. In a movie such as this one, they are measures first and foremost on their singing and all have done a fine job. Of the two leads, Jim Sturgess who plays a lad named Jude (take note) from Liverpool invokes an image of Paul McCartney. Evan Rachel Wood (the youngest of the 4 daughters in "The upside of anger" if you remember that one) is quite endearing and sings well enough. But I understand that her 2007 movie to watch is "King of California" in which she plays odd-couple father-daughter with Michael Douglas. I missed that in the Toronto International Film Festival (as I did with "Across the universe") and will try to see it the first time I get a chance.
If there is a flaw with this movie, it's in being a tad too long, in trying to say too much with the narrative, particularly the social and political issues. Leave that to other movies. It would also be better to cut out the psychedelic bus sequence in the middle to bring the movie just down to within 2 hours.