Rom-Com Disguised as Beatles Cash-Grab

Rating: 7/10 (28 June 2019)

"A world without The Beatles isn't a world worth living in."
The movie almost exactly what you'd expect from the premise the trailer and summary sets up. Inexplicably Jack is ostensibly the only person in the world to remember The Beatles and their music. So as a failed musician Jack sees his chance and slowly rises to fame by passing off any Beatles songs he can remember the lyrics and music to as his own. Once this part of the story is set up it shifts gears and goes from Beatles music picture to run-of-the-mill rom-com. The Beatles part of the flick heads backstage and intermittently reappears as referential jokes, scenes of Jack struggling to remember lyrics, and quick 15-second sound bytes of Jack's cover. The rest of the movie is dominated by the love story between Jack and Ellie. Ellie has waited all her life for Jack to love her, and well, Jack just has been too focused on his music career to apparently notice. So now that Jack is making it big he still doesn't have time for Ellie, yet he loves her he now realizes, but Ellie is mad because Jack waited too long. And so it goes.
I think the most annoying part is it's never explained why Jack falls into this alternate universe. It just happens. The audience is expected to just go with it no questions asked, and to ignore the blatant reason that it is merely to use Beatles nostalgia to boost the box-office for a mediocre rom-com. The second most annoying part is Kate McKinnon. She blows hard in this movie. In all her scenes she was overacting and was just a complete duds. It got eerily quiet every time she appeared on screen. The last bad part of this movie is the song covers are few and far between and very short. If you're going in expecting a musical Beatles movie you'll be disappointed.
Overall it was still enjoyable, but I think many viewers will have been fooled by marketing into thinking they're going to get a Beatles musical movie like 'Rocketman' or 'Bohemian Rhapsody'.