A Real Dud

Rating: 1/10 (28 April 2008)

Julie Taymor may be a competent Broadway choreographer, but she displays a total lack of movie-making skill with this dreadful film. Though the Beatles songs are competently sung, they are wrenched out of their musical context in a way that completely put me off. Further, Taymor trvializes the Sixties in a contrived, mechanical and offensive way, hitting everything with the same superficial note. Even the choreography, supposedly her strong suit, is lacklustre. The actors are helplessly adrift in what amounts to a poorly conceived and executed procession of music videos. You can tell this movie is going to be bad within the first five minutes; by mid-point, things are hopeless. Not even enjoyably terrible, "Across the Universe" is a real dud.