How can one not help but feel like this is an over-extended music video that’s blatantly and shamelessly promoting the music of the Beatles. Throw in a few dialogues here and there while trying to use existing lyrics from totally different and unrelated songs to tell a story can sometimes result in disjointed flow and incoherent character building.

Characters are randomly introduced in the middle of a song and then without first establishing anything concrete for the audience, they disappear for the next half hour before turning up again, out of the blue with no explanation why.

The actors however gave wonderful performances, especially the three leads who were exceptional and made the whole movie remotely bearable. Their singing were absolutely fantastic. Special appearances by Bono, Salma Hayek and Eddie Izzard were completely random with weird visuals that were only created for the sake of the songs. Joe Cocker came on in a few scenes to lend fantastic vocals to the song “Come Together”.

Most of the songs were produced very well by T-Bone Burnett and crew. I’m not a fan of the Beatles but I am a fan of the movie’s soundtrack, so that says something. The choreography for some of the dance numbers in the songs were also fantastically done.

But all in all, for a movie that’s says “All you need is love”, it sure didn’t feel that way. It was difficult to swallow and difficult to relate to amidst all that phatasmagoria. I guess this is what you get when a discography is made into a movie.

Rating: 4 / 10

(all images from imdb.com)