I was expecting a better movie

Rating: 3/10 (23 August 2018)

This week I chose to watch the drama, fantasy, musical called Across the Universe (2007). I have wanted to see it since it first released and always put it on the back burner until now. It definitely was not the movie I was expecting and quite frankly I was a little disappointed. The story was somewhat hard to get into and if it wasn't for Joe Anderson's character, Max, the thing may have never left the ground. There was a lot going on, but no real direction for any of it. Things just kind of happened to the characters and we got to follow them along their song and dance, directionless adventure right up to the end. I could see also where the writers pulled heavy influence from Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge (2001) and while I'm usually all for directors influencing other directors, this started to feel a little copycat minus any real point to the story. There also wasn't a lot of time spent on the character's development so it was hard to get behind why I should care for them really or why they were any more interesting than people I didn't already know. On a more interesting note, the story is set in the 1960s so it was neat to ride along with the characters in a time not so long ago and imagining what it would have been like to not own a television set, or be able to walk up to most people on the street without fear or reservation. In some ways the movie didn't feel that much different from modern times. The story, being that there wasn't one really, was pretty bland and ho-hum. Many of the musical sequences felt oddly placed and did not flow naturally, so it just ended up making the whole thing feel weird. On top of everything there were a lot of strange, unexplained visuals like Uncle Sam popping off a poster in a cartoon CGI kind of way. I understand the argument "for art," but this felt more like a "getting high and writing scripts in the name of art" kind of thing. There was also a very strange scene where the group happens upon a circus in the middle of nowhere and the audience is expected to follow this mashup of strangely dressed characters making strange movements through what looks like an animated sequence but isn't. The acting was okay. The most enjoyable part was that most of the actors/actresses could sing (or so appeared to have via ADR). I feel like the two main components of this film that could have helped the film gain some audience engagement are the directing and the writing. Directing-wise it would be nice to feel a little more fluidity in the story. The story also lacked in nuance, which made it pretty flat-except the strawberries, the strawberries meant something. Writing-wise it could have benefited from an actually direction, some stakes, and some kind of story arc. All in all, I didn't enjoy the film very much and I could live my whole life never seeing it again an be okay.