Across the Universe

A musical is a movie where music is used as a piece of constancy, not as utensil for buying the viewers easy boredom. That's what musicals nowadays don't understand (like High School Musical, Camp Rock, etc.) But Across the Universe truly makes a difference. It isn't the lame, disturbing-to-see type of musical: In fact, this is the first of the two musicals where I actually get impressed and potently pleased with what the movie delivers, othe other one being Hairpsray. It's groundbreaking, spectacular, extraordinarily rare and crazy, but not for the faint of heart. I loved it!

This is about as frustrating as movies come. A musical that can, at times, absolutely capture the magic and spirit of the Beatles, yet leave out so much of the other elements and - quite frankly - songs that made the band so damned good. A visual feat that can, at times, completely dazzle the audience with spellbinding imagery and production value, yet populate said images and set pieces with less than inspired characters and plot devices. It's a superficial marvel, no doubt, but I think the one thing that Taymor undoubtedly misses the mark on here is fairly simple: depth.

At times it is a visual masterpiece, but other times it is a sprawling mess of jumbled story arcs. The actual music is very well integrated in the movie, but that doesn't mean I would listen to any of the covers over the original Beatles version. All in all, this movie just seems unnecessary in this day and age of cinema - the 1960s were an interesting time, but this movie just flies through all of the controversial aspects without any real effort to look at why they were going on; it fills that hole with teen angst and a rather weak and predictably bland storyline.

I love the Beatles but this movie is just horrible. It's horribly pretentious and is very forced. There are characters thrown in just for the sake of some how tying in another song. The only positives this movie has is the music, but I can get that on my Ipod with out all the needless crap. The other positive is there is some very good cinematography but the vast majority of it was in the trailer. The think that irritated me most was the worthless cameos by Bono and Eddie Izzard. They were un-needed and a waste of their talent. Go out and buy a Beatles album and avoid this movie.

Pretentious, self-indulgent, and pseudo-artsy. The story is boring and superficial, peppered with far too many attempts at "powerful" psychedelic imagery. The music is the only good thing about it.