Struggling singer-songwriter Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) has finally figured out he has exactly one fan - school teacher and part-time manager, Ellie (Lily James), who is so clearly pining for him that it seems reasonable to suspect he has brain damage even before he gets hit by a bus during a mysterious world-wide blackout. He wakes up minus his two front teeth, life goes on, and only gradually does he realise that now nobody else seems to know who or what "The Beatles" are.
There's a brief moment in what comes next where the film threatens to become interesting, as despite suddenly having a bunch of brilliant songs he can call his own, his career continues to stall. Maybe the success of The Beatles was about more than just their music? Nah, of course not; before long Ed Sheeran (as himself) has offered him a support slot for a Moscow gig (thank goodness 'Back in the USSR' is a barn-burner of a track) and fame is right around the corner.
The argument that The Beatles had a bunch of songs that tugged at the heart-strings and the world needs those songs (but not, say, Maxwell's Silver Hammer or Helter Skelter) doesn't exactly require a lot of effort to make convincing, leaving scriptwriter Richard Curtis and director Danny Boyle plenty of time to focus on Elle realising that Jack's new fame is leaving her behind and Jack realising that he doesn't want to leave her behind and wait, that only requires another ten minutes of screen time so we get the extremely likable Patel playing a lot of Beatles tunes. If you didn't realise this is yet another jukebox musical a la Bohemian Rhapsody or Rocketman, you haven't been paying attention to the movies in 2019.
The concept is a little too interesting for this to be fully satisfying just as a jukebox musical - there are occasional throwaway references to a few other big things that have vanished from this world, but nothing seems to have many any real difference - but there's too many songs to leave time to really explore any of the big ideas the concept suggests. Fortunately the songs are, you know, pretty good, and the handful of moments where we're asked to imagine what it'd be like to hear them for the first time are often strikingly effective.
Overall this film is merely satisfyingly nice and pleasant, but Curtis and Boyle manage to inject enough of their own energy to make individual scenes shine; Curtis gives Jack both a circle of friends and a slightly drippy best mate, while Boyle has a lot more fun playing around with the music (one early recording sequence is great) than he does just simply filming Patel performing. Of course, what this really needed was 100 minutes of Jack looking at all the holes in pop culture The Beatles' absence would leave; how would Ferris Bueller rev up that parade if he couldn't cover the Fab Four's version of 'Twist & Shout'?
- Anthony Morris
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