The Beatles, Harry Potter and Coca-Cola

Rating: Null/10 (15 September 2019)

Going directly to the plot: Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) has been "profoundly unsuccessful for 10 years", those 10 years spent in Suffolk doing insignificant jobs and moonlighting in gigs and songwriting. Childhood best friend Ellie Appleton (Lily James), a school teacher as well as his manager, gives him unfailing support with her sunshine smiles, which seems to be the only thing going right for him. She encourages him, saying that a miracle may happen. "Like what?" he enquired. "Well, eh, Benedict Cumberbatch becoming a sex symbol", she quipped. Right away, I knew this is going to be a fun movie.
One night, when power failure hits the entire world, Jack got knocked down by a car. Lucky for him, the only lasting damage was losing two front teeth. While in hospital, as Ellie is leaving after a visit, Jack asks "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?". "Why 64?" Ellie does not appear to get it. Just out of hospital, sharing a few moments with a group of good friends, he is asked to sing a song. Instead of "All I want for Christmas is my tooth front teeth" (did not get a chance to visit a dentist yet), he sings "Yesterday". They really love it, and one of them asks "Did you write this?"
That night Jack Googles "John, Paul, George and Ringo" and gets only "Pope Paul". However, when he Googles "Rolling Stone" he is happy to see that they are "still rolling". It become quite apparent that the freak global power failure has led to a parallel universe where The Beatles have not existed. Everything else seems quite normal. Well, maybe not everything. Disappearing together with The Beatles are Harry Potter and Coke, as I intimated in my "headline".
I will not belabor the plotline, which is easy to guess, of how Jack's memory of the Beatles songs becomes the golden key to fame and fortune. A warning, however, to those who expect a trip down memory lane. The familiar songs, appearing as a few bars here and a fragment there, are only devices to forward the plotline. For the purpose of going down memory lane, "Across the universe" (2007) is much more satisfying. Similar to "Mamma Mia", it's a musical fitted with an abundance of familiar songs from the group featured.
Also familiar is the love story's two key elements. First, best friends who consider each other more as siblings or buddies finally find romantic love ("When Harry meets Sally", "Always be my maybe"). Second, while one of the two soars towards stardom, the other remains the same as the social gap between them widens ("A star is born"). Here is where the actors carry the day. Patel and James are simply marvelous and more than carry the day.