Far better than I remembered

Rating: 9/10 (19 May 2012)

Okay, no, it's not a perfect movie, not by a long stretch... but y'know, looking at it again after two years, it ain't half bad.
Let's the negatives out of the way first. Eddy Izzard is downright awful, apparently ad libbing his way through Mr. Kite — and doing a rather shoddy job of it, especially after one has to watch the two previous takes in the extras section of the DVD. Some of the messages are layered on with a one-ton version of Maxwell's silver hammer, like any of the riot scenes. The cinematography gets a bit precious at times, with some pretty dreadful filtering work that, I gather, is supposed to look like "oh man, a trip!!"
Okay, that's the worst of it. Everything else? Not bad, actually. The performances are all great fun to watch, from the Janis Joplin earth mother, who seems, for a time, the core of the film's second act, to the crazy Princeton boy who winds up in Vietnam (via a fascinating production number that underlines the army's essential homoerotica with a bright, bright red line). The two leads are especially charming, if a bit thin, and the little lesbian Prue really deserved more screen time. Perhaps in Taymor's uncut version she got it.
The covers of all the songs we know so well are performed pretty darn well: one converts a love song into an on-stage spat between "Janis" and her guitarist, who bears a singular resemblance to Jimi Hendrix. They intertwine with the plot as well as the four (maybe five?) story lines themselves knit together.
Visually, it's stunning, with Bread and Roses puppets and walls transformed into clouds and a singularly beautiful scene right at the outset. Taymor definitely carried her stage director's eye into this project, and it served the material well.
Again, not a perfect movie. Close, but not quite — and so far from it that I had to rescind on that final star. But an enjoyable read of the Beatles' catalogue coupled with a lovely little love story — you cant ask for much more than that.