Cameron H.

Maybe. I don't know. Guuuuuuys, this movie is too deep for me.

Sorry, I'm not sure I'm following you about the Vietnam thing. And I'm okay with it being sung at his funeral, but the song starts at the riots. I know that she is not literally saying, "Hey, bros, 'Let it Be,'" I'm saying that by playing it over that scene you are sending, intentionally or not, a very weird message. There's a lack of clarity there that I don't like.

It's actually a lot closer to the original version. Paul actually wrote it for Aretha Franklin, but she kept hesitating on whether or not she wanted to do it, so he finally said, "Fuck it, I'll do it myself..." Finally, after the Beatles released their version, Aretha finally pulled the trigger and recorded it the way it was intended.

I have to say, I still feel like I'm missing "something." CakeBug, you've said a couple of times that the "All You Need is Love" scene affects you on an emotional level, however, I found I couldn't muster up the energy to care beyond sensing the movie was almost over. And, honestly, I think that is the most damning thing I can say about this movie. I don't hate the characters, I'm just apathetic to them. Why should I care? Why is Jude special? Or Lucy? Or anyone? They all just come off as cyphers set adrift in the Sixties? And even when "events" happen there's little internal context to make it meaningful or impactful. For example, the "Let it Be" scene. Suddenly, we're violently thrust into this riot with no idea where we are in space in time. Basically I'm supposed to make my own contextual connections based upon my knowledge of recent American Histor--and that seems like a real iffy way to tell a narrative. Sure what's going on is terrible, but who are they and what's happening? Also, I fucking hated "Let it Be" being used for that scene. For the funeral, fine, but the Detroit Riots? Fuck that! "Let it Be" literal means "bad things happen so we need to learn to accept them and move on" So...we should just be letting racism "be" now? I don't fucking think so.

Added!

Nice to meet you! Let me know if you want to be added to the rotation!

I think it was just showing how "progressive and modern" she was.

Honestly, Forest Gump: the Musical is what this movie wanted to be and should have been.

That was another weird thing. I know I'm not supposed to be "listening to the lyrics," but sometimes the movie would call attention to them in weirdly literal ways. Like the "Jai Guru Deva" line in "Across the Universe." Oh, yes,, of course a bunch of Hare Krisnas pass by at that exact moment. What else could have logically happened? And speaking of weird literal translations, I HATED the "Revolution" scene. Here's a legit protest song, that could work in a number of relevant places, but let's turn it into a "jealous boyfriend storming into his girlfriend's workplace" song instead. But thank God there was a picture of Chairman Mao on the wall. Otherwise the whole scene would have been ridiculous...

I would too, but that's it's own, totally different, movie.

I agree with cutting Prudence. I'm not saying what she's about isn't important, but I'm not sure if it belongs in this movie. Again, someone, somewhere, thought, "Wouldn't it be interesting if 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand' was a song about homosexual longing?" And sure, I see that, but where exactly does that fit in with my Liverpudlian Artist/American Teenage Girl love story? Or my boyfriend and brother went to Vietnam story? Or I'm meeting my father for the first time story? Or Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix form a supergroup story? She literally gets introduced at about minute 8 and doesn't come in "through the bathroom window" until 30 minutes later. I had literally forgotten she existed.

Those are the juiciest strawberries I've ever seen... And congrats on 500!

Because "Apple Corps." Puny Banner! Hulk Strong!!

"Reverse engineered" is exactly right. Things happen simply so they can make sense, but every time they try to "make sense" it gets away from them. I get where you and Ellenmc are coming from, but this isn't a documentary or a biopic. These are fictitious characters that only are as their writer says they are. There's no law that saw that Jude HAS to be from England. "Oh, wait. It's based on the Beatles' music so I guess someone has to be from Liverpool. So we'll just create another character and he'll go to Vietnam." "Hey, the Beatles have a song called "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window" someone should do that inexplicably in the movie and then we can say that...."

Adding you now! Glad to have you aboard. Let me know if you have any questions.

Good God! Don't "add" anything. Simplify. It felt like the movie would spin out of control whenever they tried to work a new song in. I think what this movie lacked was a strong central narrative. Why not get rid of Max and have Jude be the one to go to Vietnam? Why does he have to have a girlfriend he leaves behind in Liverpool? Why does Sadie have to be here (Oh, right, because Janis Joplin...) and why should I care?

It's interesting to me that you enjoy this movie from an adaptation perspective, because that's where, musically, it fails for me. I don't mind what are essentially a bunch of covers, but they never really felt cohesive. They would shoehorn moments simply because they mentioned in a song, or include lyrics with little regard as to why those words are there in the first place. For one example, in "Come Together" the lyrics are "he bag production/ he got Ono sideboard." Obviously, these are very Lennon specific references ("Bag Production" is in reference to one of his peace protests where he and Ono did an interview in a bag), but they mean absolutely nothing in context of "JoJo." Yet the movie insists on using these lines. It ends up just being gibberish and does nothing to forward the plot or tell me who this character is. Also, from an adaptation perspective, for someone doing a Beatles jukebox musical, she seems to have done very little in terms of Beatles research. They do things like recite "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together" like it's some kind of spiritual mantra, but "I Am the Walrus" was written specifically to be the antithesis of this kind of thinking. You see, Lennon was annoyed that colleges were starting to teach classes on Beatles lyrics and trying to decipher their "meaning." So one day, as he was sitting in his garden tripping on acid, he heard a police siren go by and wrote a bit of doggerel around the tone he was hearing ("DUH-na, DUH-na"). Afterward, he was quoted as saying something along the lines of "Let's see the fuckers figure that one out." He wrote the song specifically to mock the type of academics that would interpret his lyrics as some kind of hippie gospel, or precisely what the characters in this movie do. Then there are simpler moments like "I've Just Seen a Face." Of all the songs in the movie, I actually think I like this one the most, but in terms of "plot" it makes no sense to me where it falls. "I've Just Seen a Face" is an upbeat song about the joy of love at first sight, so it would make sense for Jude to sing it when he sees Lucy for the first time. Instead the movie has them be introduced (where he shows no sign of interest), have dinner at Lucy and Max's house (where he shows little or no interest), they have a conversation outside (where they have a nice-ish conversation), and then they go bowling--Yay! It's love at 19th sight! I think what happened here is Taymor wanted to do a movie about "the sixties" and decided that The Beatles epitomized that decade. However, by limiting her music selection to just the one band, it forced the movie to move in odd directions. She should have music from all over the decade and it would have given her a broader pallet to work with. Ultimately, I think AtU could needed a more economic storyline. It jumps from person to person and place to place with little rhyme or reason. By omitting some characters or combining them, I think it would have helped the movie as a whole. As it stands, the movie is trying to do too much with too little.

Oof! Okay... I'll say something positive. I really liked the "I Want You"/ Max gets drafted sequence. It was, in my mind, one of the stand out moments --at least visually.

I'm wondering if the people who like/love the movie shouldn't go first. I want to be respectful of CakeBug and his pick and don't want this to just become a flood of negativity. CakeBug and Taylor Anne, what is it about this movie that resonates with you? What aren't we getting? Win us over!

I honestly have no idea what I'm going to do with myself next week.

You got it!

I hate to break it to you, but this is my new forum persona. You better start getting used to it...

Aficionadoo-doos? Scatsperts? Devoturds?

Ah! I didn't know that I was speaking with a fellow connoisseur?