"A world without The Beatles is a world that's infinitely worse."

Rating: 7/10 (27 December 2019)

Imagine a world without Coca-Cola, cigarettes, Harry Potter or The Beatles. Imagine a world in which the song 'Imagine' by John Lennon doesn't exist. I thought this was a pretty clever concept for a movie treatment and it works up to a point. It's just that the film had a less than totally polished look and feel to it. I couldn't warm up to the principal character Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) being the repository of the entire Beatles catalog following the twelve second blackout the world experienced. His second agent, Debra Hammer (Kate McKinnon) voiced that concern best when she stated "Is this the best you can look?" However when 'John Lennon' shows up in the picture, you really have to do a double take and remind yourself that he in fact is gone from this mortal coil. It was uncanny how actor Robert Carlyle resembled Lennon, living in a world in which the Beatles never came together. The romance angle between Jack and Ellie Appleton (Lily James) was sweet enough, but again, for some reason I couldn't reconcile the idea of the two of them together. Best part of the picture of course is the music, with quite reasonable renditions of many Beatles songs by actor Patel. There was one disconnect however when Jack Malik made his heartfelt confession to the crowd at Wembley Stadium. Even if he credited John, Paul, George and Ringo as the writers of all those hits, anyone hearing that confession and compelled enough to do an internet search like Jack did would have come up empty. Which still made Jack the originator of all those tunes in the newly established world order.