NOT QUITE THERE, NEEDED MORE TIME IN THE IDEA OVEN...!

Rating: 5/10 (10 July 2019)

The latest from director Danny Boyle (28 Days Later/Slumdog Millionaire) & writer Richard Curtis (Four Weddings & a Funeral/Notting Hill) is a mind-bending treatise on the notion of sanctified memory (the music of the Beatles) existing in a world where they never existed except in the memory of a busking, struggling singer/songwriter who decides to take advantage of this scenario. An intriguing concept struggles to maintain its novelty throughout the run time since the follow through can't quite successfully hit its mark. Most audiences will be primed for seeing anything to do w/the Beatles but in this new world there is no fallout to admitting the truth to something that doesn't exist but that doesn't stop our lead from feeling guilty about his deception even though his conclusion feels one sided & hollow. Boyle does well by the material since some of his films have a bit of wonderment & whimsy laced in them & Curtis strolls his usual tropes (the bumbling best friend ala Notting, the one girl in his life he falls for cue Four Weddings) even mining his own About Time, which dealt w/memory & changes to timelines, to concoct this fantasy which does have a decent but undemanding ending even though we still feel things are off.