Despite all of the trailers for "Across the Universe" I've seen this summer, I was actually blindsided by it's under-the-wire American release last weekend. My first set of cassettes I owned were "Meet the Beatles," "Srgt Pepper" and the two "Best of the Beatles" double cassettes and I've been a fan ever since. When I saw that a new Julie Taymor film with a hot British guy and a soundtrack made completely of Beatles songs was coming out I was quite excited. The trailer only increased my anticipation with rocking orchestrations and clips of the mind blowning visual effects Ms. Taymor is known for.
And then I caught the 10:30 "Across the Universe" last night.
It's not a bad movie, but it's not what I expected and it's too long. The first realization, which was actually a pleasant surprise, was that "Across the Universe" is honestly a musical and doesn't just use Beatles music as background. The main probelm is that it's "Mamma Mia!" with a more relevant storyline, because it has more relevant music. I.E. rather than all the songs being about dancing and relationships, there are a lot of Beatles songs about the changing world, USA mired in an endless war, etc.
The movie reeks of Jukebox Musical doldrums right down to inside jokes like the fact that every character has a name mentioned in a Beatles song, a scene where the main character, Jude, sketches a green apple, and a reunion performance on a rooftop to wrap up the film.
As best as I could gather from the trailer, the story was the standard "teens caught in the whirl of a world falling apart in the late 60's". An interting twist being that Jude is an illigal Liverpudlian. And of course I had high hopes for Taymor's artistic take on these standard elements. If you've seen the trailers, you've seen the extent of her visual extravagance, which were few and far between and felt forced. That's not to say that over all the movie wasn't visually well constructed, shot, and, edited, but the trailer gives the impression that it's practically Moulin Rouge! with it's quickfire, abstract visuals, and it isn't.
As much as I enjoyed the re-orchestrations and new conceptualization of the songs, there were too many. Especially when a good third of them didn't even move the story along or elaborate anything. Despite impressive performance value, for all that they added, they may as well have been playing in the background under action which actually propelled the story. The worst example of this is the character Prudence. While "Dear Prudence" is probably one of my favorite Beatles song, her entire storyline which lead to the performance of that song was pointless. As evidenced by the fact that once "Dear Prudence" was song, you don't see her again until the final scene.
I think I'm probably being a little too harsh on the film mainly because it failed to live up to my expectations, which is no one's fault but my own, and a comment that often bothers me when others make it about productions. It would be interesting to see a review from someone not well acquainted with the songs who wouldn't see certain numbers coming a mile away. Of course I have no idea where you could find someone not familiar with the majority of those songs.
I would reccomend "Across the Universe" to any die hard Beatles fan. I would suggest it to Taymor fans because the visuals are best seen on the big screen. All others...meh...if you like musicals and attractive English artists, you could do a lot worse. "Across the Universe" may not deliver on it's title, but it will do as a 20th century period piece which will take you across the space of an evening on an interesting emotional ride.
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