After watching the movie Yesterday, I went online to see
what the critics thought of it. Talk about polarizing. While some said it was
superb, others slammed the film, with one referring to it as the worst movie
she’d ever seen (obviously that reviewer has never seen Mama Mia 2, which not
even an appearance by the iconic Cher could save.)
To bridge the gap between these opposing points of view, let
me toss my 2 cents into to the opinion pool. Yesterday is neither the best nor
the worst of movies... and that’s both a problem and a pity. A film that pays
homage to the Beatles massive library had the opportunity to knock it out of
the park. Instead it merely walks to first base.
The premise, without revealing more than the film’s trailers
have, finds the world a strange place where the Beatles and the mania that they caused,
has never existed. Only the lead character Jack Malik, played by Himesh Patel - a down on his luck musician,
remembers the Fab Four and claim’s their lyrics as his own. Yes, the concept is
a bit odd but if you go into it anticipating you will be asked to use your
imagination, it makes the impossible plausible and the movie somewhat more
tolerable.
Yesterday does bring us rearranged covers of the Beatles
songs, something that has worked in the past for other films such as Across the
Universe and is entertaining here as well. But where it failed for me was about
midway when the plot not only thickened, it congealed. The “no Beatles” story
was still present, but seemed to take a back seat to another storyline, one
that’s been used repeatedly for decades on the big screen and has been done
better.
John Lennon asked us to Imagine a world of peace while
Yesterday asks us to imagine the planet without the four lads from Liverpool.
I’m still holding out hope for Lennon’s vision but have little of it left for
Yesterday.