Richard Curtis / Danny Boyle film, Yesterday

You know, bloke wakes up and there are no Beatles, so pretends he wrote the songs.

First reviews are in, and it's not a good film. Which is a given, obviously. Best viewpoint is, there are a few good bits, but there are some really bad bits, and the rest is underwritten.

So, what are the Music Mags (heritage) to do? Turn down the opportunity to make big beatles spreads? Or give the film both barrels and/or get a Charles Shaar Murray or Nick Kent to come out of retirement? Or wot?

Four-star review in the Guardian, actually.

I fear that's a taste of things to come.

Yeah that seems pretty bad. It would work as a netflix movie or something, I guess.

danny boyle is cancelled

This sounds like a terrible idea for a movie. The only way it could be even mildly interesting would be if the bloke couldn't remember all the lyrics and had to make up new ones. So all the Beatles songs performed by the bloke in the movie are more like Weird Al Yankovic parodies. Actually that sounds pretty bad too.

Or he tries one of his own, and gets a taste of failure.

Maybe if Ringo Starr was still a celebrity, but no-one could remember why he became famous originally.

Have the Rutles disappeared as well

They become the Rutlin' Stones.

In “Yesterday,” the greatness of the Beatles is like a trump card that Jack, and the filmmakers, keep playing. Yet the greatness of the Beatles is never something the film invites us to discover. The songs, to be fair, are iconic — but that said, some Beatles songs are more iconic than others. And “Yesterday” features nothing but the Beatles tracks that you would put on a “12 All-Time Greatest Songs of the Beatles!” collection. It’s not even so much that the song selection is famous-to-a-fault but that the movie treats the songs as official facts of beauty, rather than as melodies that could strike us with the freshness they’re supposed to be hitting this suddenly un-Beatle-ized world with.

https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/yesterday-review-the-beatles-danny-boyle-1203205141/

We also chuckle (a bit) when Ed suggests that Jack change the title of “Hey Jude” to “Hey Dude.”

presumably kula shaker are erased from this universe too. or maybe just forgotten

And the one we are in, tbf

i’d be much more into this if the main character went back in time and murdered the infant beatles

mark david sandman

xxxp or he can't quite remember the titles, lyrics, or music, and everything comes out sounding like Oasis.

Then he gets chinned by Liam Gallagher.

The thing is : I don’t even think if the Beatles hadn’t existed and someone came up with their songs today that would be successful considering the current « pop » scene...

Well I'm looking forward to seeing it, you load of misery guts.

Xpost most of the reviews (well, all the ones I've seen) have said that same thing.

I’m genuinely surprised that isn’t the plot/point tbh. I assumed this would be the boomer rockist version of “if Christ returned today, we’d crucify him.”

would be much more interesting if he performed beatles songs and everyone thought the melodies were treacly and the lyrics trash.

it's got Sheeran + Corden in it playing themselves as well, accuse away of me being a misery guts - but I can at my most impartial wish King Tut's worst curse on every fool involved in this risible pile of fucking plop.

I'm just glad this under-discussed band will finally get some attention.

since his celebrated opening ceremony for the London Olympics I make that about 4-5(?) abject turkeys in a row from the Arse Boyle - oh sorry the genius auteur director from Bury who is the jolly best we have.
+

accidental +, not some stylistic device!

I haven't seen anything Boyle's directed since Sunshine (which is great) and a quick look at Wikipedia reveals I haven't missed a thing.

sunshine is pretty great for the first hour, i'll allow

i'll just leave my "Noel Gallagher should've starred" joke here

i hope there will be a reviewer that points out that in beloved 1990s time-traveling bigamist sitcom "goodnight sweetheart" gary sparrow (nicholas lyndhurst) exploits the ignorance of the ww ii era denizens of the royal oak pub regarding the music of the beatles to ingratiate himself to the locals and woo his soon to be second wife with renditions of hey jude etc on the old joanna

It's already been pointed out:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/apr/28/beatles-inspired-danny-boyle-film-yesterday

thank god!

now if everyone will be open about the huge influence the piglet files have had on the spy spoof genre i can die a happy man

danny boyle and richard curtis When they met...it was moider!

picturing a scene where he performs "Strawberry Fields Forever" to a festival crowd for the first time and gets mercilessly booed off the stage, now that I wanna see

Revolution 9 or gtf

he plays "run for your life" at glastonbury and gets cancelled

Writes "Taxman" as theme song for the Boris Johnson, playing himself, leadership campaign.

I just want see that smug, self-satisfied grey-thatched phizog of Richard Curtis getting vapourised by hardcore weapons of death.

Should have renamed “let it be” to “let it bleed” and given it the latter’s lyrics

kudos jiv

Revolution 9 or gtf

It was on one of the post-its on his wall and they didn't use it in the movie! Tragically unfired pistol.

I liked some of this. (Don't go in wanting to hate it. You'll hate it.) The premise--clumsily brought into being--is worth pondering; definite affinities with Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood, in general and very specifically once. Thought some of the upside-down arrangements were good: "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" and "She Loves You" as acoustic singer-songwriter, "Help" as something approaching punk, etc. The three songs that were confounding Jack, I thought there was interesting reading there, but when an explanation actually came, seems I was over-analyzing things. Drove me up the wall trying to place Lily James...didn't figure it out until I checked online. I'd see her in anything.

The biggest problem for me--not a small one--was Himesh Patel. Found him rather bland, not helped by a script that required he wear the same confused expression the entire film.

"an interesting"

So turns out Richard Curtis screwed the actual writer and ruined his script, massive shock at this revelation of course.

https://uproxx.com/movies/jack-barth-interview-yesterday-writer-richard-curtis/

This film needs a follow-up where Ed Sheeran - playing himself - wakes up one morning a nobody, then never gets beyond the pub circuit because his songs are so shit, despite telling everyone he played three nights at Wembley Stadium.

The thing that kills me about this story is that when the film came out everyone's reaction was "it would be much better if he didn't get famous instantly" and what do you know that's the original story, only in every Richard Curtis film everyone has to be wildly successful because his only mode is making nauseating low-key propoganda for the UK media establishment. Like every creative decision he ever makes invloves closing a door instead of opening one.

Like every creative decision he ever makes invloves closing a door instead of opening one.

otm and fwiw I have been on the receiving end of this in one particular instance although it was theatre so the stakes were much lower. I really feel for that writer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkqXyTwFt6g