Critic Reviews

What’s startling about “Get Back” is that as you watch it, drinking in the moment-to-moment reality of what it was like for the Beatles as they toiled away on their second-to-last studio album, the film’s accumulation of quirks and delights and boredom and exhilaration becomes more than fascinating; it becomes addictive. ... In the end, “Get Back” is better than good. It’s essential, an extended love letter to everything that made the Beatles real.

It is a monument to The Beatles, enormous and revealing, which acts as a bulwark against the endless books and articles and chatter about them by simply showing them as they were. In part, it is a corrective, but it is also a fortification. Any future assessment of the band and its members will have to measure up against the people we see here.

Overall, Jackson’s insights are savvy, knowing which seemingly repetitive playings of songs or quibbles about performance venues will bring something new to our understanding of these men. ... With a project like this that brings back music history from the cutting room floor to the limelight, it makes sense to have too much rather than too little.

One of the most entertaining, compelling and important chapters in filmed music history.

Seeing all of this footage is a revelation, not just for how it provides a necessary counter to the prevailing narrative, but also because the visuals look like a total dream, pristine, sharp and clear, with no fuzz or distortion.

The result is bliss for Beatles fans. Take all the films and interviews with the Beatles and put them off to the side. This is the most informative and illuminating record of what these men were like and of the nature of their interaction.

The Beatles: Get Back is as much archaeology as it is cinema, a docuseries committed not just to showing us new moments of the band that we’ve never seen before, but to crafting a broader picture of their oft-controversial dynamic.

Simply put, "Get Back" is nothing short of a Thanksgiving holiday miracle. As the series unfolds from dreary Twickenham to the eminently more convivial Savile Row, we observe the Beatles crafting new songs before our very eyes. It makes for a transfixing experience, indeed.

Feels positively chock-full of fresh insights into the inner workings of one of the greatest rock-and-roll bands of all time. ... It’s a little too long; it’s just as rewarding watched closely as it is when treated like an audiovisual tapestry you simply play in the background while doing something else. It isn’t perfect; it might be an instant classic?

Glorious. ... “The Beatles: Get Back” is an astonishingly up-close and engrossing view of Paul, John, George, and Ringo and their creative process.