This is not a good movie. This is not a good film. This is not even a half-way decent attempt at creating moving images in any way. This is a one-hour made-for-TV flick that the Beatles made as an obligation to their fans to make up for their ceased touring. The result is a train wreck that they were obligated to their fans to apologize for making in the first place. It was all Paul's idea (and the cheeky bastard has the stones to deny it too...)Really this movie is a love story. That is, if you were to try and derive any kind of conceivable "plot" from it. The lucky couple is the Auntie of Mr. Richard Starkey (played by Ringo... using his real name...) and Mr. Buster Bloodvessel (played by Ivor Cutler.) Auntie Jessie is fat. Really fat. And Buster is insane. Out of his gourd. Completely... Maybe. He's taken the tour more than once and each time he believes himself to be working for the tour company. The tour hostess and tour conductor let him believe this.
Ringo's in a pinstripe suit. He looks dapper as hell. He and his Auntie bicker the entire time they're on the bus together and the only reason this works is because obviously Ringo didn't want to be doing this film at all. It's almost as if he's bickering with Paul the whole time, but Paul is a fat old lady (well done, Starr.) This is kind of like how John is sleeping for much of the beginning of the movie and George sits silently looking completely uninterested. In the opening "performance," George doesn't even play the guitar lines right. He ain't tryin'. John and George appear to have come on the bus together while Paul came with a really plain looking English girl who he doesn't give enough attention to because he's too busy looking at the camera trying to be cute. He's an asshole.
There are, however, a few redeeming parts to the film. The part where they're all wizards in space is not one of them. In one dream sequence, John plays an absolutely demented waiter/servant dressed as a tripped out bell-boy with slicked back hair and a pencil thin mustache... The entire scene he's literally shoveling pounds and pounds of spaghetti from underneath a table onto the fat Aunt Jessie's dinner plate while an elderly man looks on and hands the camera napkins and bites into REALLY LOUDLY CRUNCHING lettuce. John continues to pile the spaghetti even after Aunt Jessie gets up to leave. This scene is really, really pointless and bothersome, but at least it's humorously demented. It's a nice contrast to Paul's bit, where he's walking around cliffs and mountains and fields of France looking longingly into the camera like we're supposed to give a shit.
Another good scene is in a strip joint :: The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band ("Urban Spaceman" anyone?) imitating some kind of Elvis on acid singing a song called "Death Cab For Cutie"... (now you know where that really uninspiring unoriginal boring miserable band's name came from. "Congrats.")
But really, these two scenes aren't enough to save the film. The rest of the movie is a bus full of people literally on a tour where each stop is a fucked up acid trip one of the Beatles thought up. Somehow the Beatles dressed up as wizards are affecting the trip, and for some reason they decided to make a fat lady and an old crazy man falling somewhat-in-love the only real piece of plot you can find during the whole hour you're watching.
It is short though. And it is the Beatles. And maybe I would have thought it was much better if I were on the right combination of drugs. Or if I were one of the Beatles in 1967. Or maybe just if I were Paul McCartney... but I wouldn't wish that upon anybody.
This is the third film of the five the Beatles made... I'm gonna try to get around to doing all of them, but it just so happened I watched this one last night and I'm bored enough at work to ramble about it for a minute on the internets. With all this Beatles Rock Band bullshit hype going around (this is what... the fourth Beatles revival since they broke up?) I just want to set the record straight on some of their lesser known works (at least to people in my generation) before everyone goes around thinking "John Lennon" is simply a video game character akin to Crash Bandicoot or Sonic the Hedgehog. Paul would be Princess Peach.
See it, hear it, laugh at it, learn from it and then you never have to see it again. But you can't go through your whole life ignoring it. It is the Beatles after all... and in case you haven't figured it out yourself yet, they wrote a lot of the rules for this whole music tip. Check it out.
-Conor
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