Across The Universe

Well, at least this one doesn’t have any Bee Gees in it.

But before I get to this latest Beatle Beating, let’s hit some previews.

ATONEMENT–Or maybe just one. This one is from the same director as Pride And Prejudice. Does anyone remember his name? (It’s Joe Wright. But, no. No one remembered.) It stars James McAvoy (who is starting to make a name for himself…good for him) and Keira Knightley. Something about a couple during WWII who are broken up when her younger sister accuses him of a crime that he didn’t commit. He goes to war. Tears are shed. Millions of women force their boyfriends to go see another movie because they were forced to sit through Domino. Meh. I’ll wait for video.

So, what’s this about a movie that John Lennon would never have wanted made?

Yeah. John HATED musicals. He thought that they were pretty much the worst form of entertainment ever created. (Which makes it funny that Yoko decided to ok a musical based on their lives, huh? It was mostly her music, though.) So, of course, everyone and their dog wants to make a musical based around The Beatles’ music. (Extra slap in John’s face: the movie was released on his birthday. Whoops.)

Especially Paul.

And here is the result. (No, Paul had nothing to do with it.)

Julie Taymor (Frida, Titus) has crafted a story about a young Liverpudlian named Jude (Jim Sturgess, probably cast because of his resemblance to Sir Paul) who came over The Pond to find his dad. After that, he finds a friend at Princeton where his father works as a janitor. The friend, Max (Joe Anderson, probably cast because of his resemblance to…John Stamos?) has a sister, Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood–the only semi-name in the film). She has a boyfriend, but when he’s sent off to Vietnam, that problem is taken care of pretty quickly.

Romance ensues.

Oh yeah. And there are some other completely unimportant characters. Honestly, these three are the only characters we need. Everyone else flits in and out of their lives and we just don’t care about them. The musical duo of Sadie (Dana Fuchs) and JoJo (Martin Luther McCoy) are meant to be some kind of Janis Joplin/Jimi Hendrix duo. They’re kind of cool, but they really aren’t very needed. And the real weak-link is Prudence (T.V. Carpio…yes, her name is T.V.). The actress is fine, but the character has NO reason to exist except to have someone come out of a closet while the entire cast sings for her to “come out to play.” Worthless otherwise. She does not move the story along and is basically uninteresting.

Sadie did do one thing for me. She made me really miss Janis Joplin. When she’s belting out “Helter Skelter” (which she does a decent job at), I realized that Janis would have torn that song up. That one and “Oh! Darling” would have been her songs if she had done them.

The movie is, of course, beautiful to look at. Julie Tamor is nothing if not a very good and interesting director. Her films are always visually perfect.

Unfortunately, she and cohorts Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais (who also wrote Flushed Away as well as about 50 other films/tv shows since 1965) wanted to cram as many Beatles’ songs into one musical as possible, sometimes completely ignoring story flow. It’s as if they chose their favorite Beatles’ songs and, as a friend of mine said, connected the dots. The story didn’t come first. There’s a bit with Bono that, while it gives him a chance to kick ass at “I Am The Walrus,” has no place in the story. And the less said about Eddie Izzard’s version of “Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite” the better. (It would have been fine if they hadn’t let him ad-lib between lines.) Did they really feel that they needed TWO Ken Kesey/Timothy Leary characters? It’s especially strange since Bono is pretty anti-drug. How did they get him to do this?

Joe Cocker, however, does have a pretty cool cameo as three different people singing “Come Together.”

A few years ago, there was a movie called The Dreamers. It was about the troubles of three little people during the social upheavals in France in the 60s. That wasn’t a perfect movie by any means. But it did what Taymor is trying to do here. It took three rather fucked up people and put their troubles against a backdrop of what was basically a revolution. And it did it better than this one because it didn’t try to do EVERYTHING. Here we have a kid killed in Vietnam, one being sent over there, a girl caught up in the “revolution,” a singer trying to get a contract and possibly having to break up her band to do it, two drug gurus, domestic violence, homosexuality and sexual freedom, riots…anything you can think of that happened in the 60s happens in this movie. (Except for any major drug use. They hint at morphine addiction, but it’s glossed over pretty quickly. And the drug gurus, as I said, are just kind of there for no reason.)

The best scenes were the surreal ones. When Max goes to the draft board they send a bunch of military guys in propaganda poster makeup out to give the boys their physicals while singing “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” It gets pretty heavy handed, though, when the boys start carrying the Statue Of Liberty around…in their underwear. (Most homo-erotic scene in the entire movie.) I also liked the “Happiness Is A Warm Gun” scene with the five Salma Hayeks. (And, no, I didn’t ONLY like it because of the five Salmas. That was just an added bonus. The spazing priest, though cancels it out. That was just silly.)

I will give Taymor this: for ONCE someone got the actual meaning of “Revolution” right. She realized that John wasn’t calling for revolution. He was actually speaking out against one.

Also, kudos to Taymor for only referencing the fact that Max is named after a song and not having them sing the fucking song to him.

The acting and singing was pretty good all around. No one was terrible. It was decent enough that I bought the soundtrack. Which, I guess, is all I can ask for with something like this. It was enjoyable enough to an extent. (Except for that fucking “Dear Prudence” scene.) But I’m sure that there’s a good musical in The Beatles’ music. This just isn’t it.

Added points for the MPAA letting so much nudity go in a PG-13 movie. The movie wasn’t filled with nudity or anything, but there are a couple of scenes where a butt and a nipple are shown. Not bad for the mainstream. But, then again, I guess it IS a mainstream movie. Which means it gets a pass.