I can't picture this being any better in a theater. It's showy and as a movie it's a complete failure. As a series of music videos it sometimes makes connections.

Too commercial to be abstract.

I was a tad underwhelmed in theatres, just finished watching it on DVD and was surprised by how much more I liked it.
I find it pretty enjoyable, even though a lot of it doesn't really work for me.

Awful mess of a film. More often than not, I was laughing at stuff that was supposed to be a serious scene.

I think the main problem with the film is the Jude and Lucy main storyline. It felt like two hours of the "Wake Me Up When September Ends" video... just terribly boring and uninteresting. A lot of that blame goes on the actors too, Sturgess is bland, while Wood is absolutely terrible. I thought she was supposed to be a promising young startlet? Her combination of total stiffness and overacting was eerily Mischa Barton-esque.

I somewhat enjoyed the storyline between the singer and guitar player, though maybe that was by association because everything else was bad.

The musical numbers were ok. I like the songs, but in delivery a lot of them felt again, bland and stiff. It's hard to really buy into the songs if the actors can't make you believe they're singing them. I also didn't like how they didn't change the gender pronouns if a female was singing... maybe it was intentional but again, believability failed. I also didn't like how they named the characters after the songs just to have an easier and lazier route for the songs.

The visuals were mostly there for the sake of being there. Taymor kind of went over her head with the art, the rest of the movie really wasn't directed well enough to support batshit visuals.

Largely a mess and missed oppurtunity. 1.5/5

I loved some scenes, I hated some scenes, the singing is sometimes good, sometime its awful


B-

You can put me in the "hate" camp of this love/hate picture. After a few nice numbers at the start (specifically "A Little Help from My Friends" and "Hold Me Tight"), it manages to turn into a jumbled, unappealing mess. It totally comes off the tracks during the "I Am the Walrus/Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!/Because" segment, and even though things look up just a tiny bit from there on out, it never really recovers. There were multiple "serious" scenes where I just couldn't stop myself from bursting out laughing ("Strawberry Fields Forever" was, for me at least, the most unintentionally hilarious scene of any 2007 film, though "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" and "Happiness is a Warm Gun" weren't far behind).

Given that I really love the music of The Beatles, I really wanted to at least like this movie, but it's a pretty disastrous near-failure in my eyes.

Grade: D

My wife is the biggest Beatles nut on the planet, so I was forced to watch this one. She thought it was the best movie of the year. For me it had some good musical numbers... I liked the Joe Cocker number, the Bono one, and the one with the kid going into the Army. Some great visuals in there. However, when it bogged down with the story between the principal characters, I was largely bored.

In the end it felt like 4 or 5 great music videos with a lot of filler that I had to watch in between. I did like all the small semi-hidden Beatle references, but in the end I thought it could be tightened up a lot.

Grade: C+

This movie grew on me quite a bit on my second viewing. It's still not a great movie, but I think I was able to appreciate it much more.

such a fun musical that has superb performances from Evan Rachel Wood and Jim Strugees, and the fun music from one of the most beloved (if not the most beloved) group of all time, The Beatles!

A-

I must be in the huge minority on this one, because I thought by far the first half was mroe interesting than the second half. After the scene in the recruitment office things start to tail off. The block of twenty minutes in the middle of the movie completely devoted to drugs (I.E. ZERO plot development) really drew me out of the movie hardcore and that killed the momentum the front half had been building up, even though the second half was made just as well.

I will agree that each scene/song was a wonderful interpretation looking at them individually, but stringing all of the songs gives us an overall paper-thin and uninteresting plot. I think both the relationship plots could have been developed better. Whenever Sadie and what's his name were conflicting on screen I was confused because I didn't think they had had enough exposure to warrant a subplot, which was another factor that drew me out of the movie.

The whole thing plays out like the film-makers were just thinking "Hey look at this cool trick I can do! It's the Beatles!" while forgetting that this should have been first and foremost a movie, not a gimmick. As it is, though, the visuals are very strong and the interpretations of the songs are all fantastic. The good outweighs the bad, and I would recommend this to people.

B

P.S. "She's So Heavy" will blow your mind, and "Let It Be" is one of the most emotionally heavy scenes I've ever seen.

Hmm, Sommie givbng this a decent grade gives me some hope.

It was really hard to grade because of how inconsistent it feels. There are some really brilliant moments and I can't say that the movie isn't incredibly intelligent. There are just some huge mistakes made which detract from the intelligence.

OUCH. This one hurt. The scene in the bowling alley is the only one that came close to working.

Soooooooooooooo bad

This is how you take a bunch of unrelated songs and mash them into an interesting movie. I'm looking at you, Mamma Mia. Far from perfect; in fact, incredibly flawed, but so gorgeous on both a visual and auditory level that I was swept away. But sometimes it did go too far with its this-is-an-acid-trip-on-film feel; the Bono part especially... that was just like, come on. My favorite scenes were the rooftop ending, the Strawberry Fields scene, and the I Want You (the kid getting drafted) scene.

A-