"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Friday, July 12, 2019

Yesterday (2019, PG-13)


This is a movie I was definitely waiting for from the moment I first saw the trailer. I loved the sound of the concept, I liked the look of the casting, and come on – who really needs an excuse to listen to Beatles songs for a couple of hours? While, on the whole, I’d say it’s not quite as good as I hoped it would be, I still had a good time (premise spoilers.)

Jack, a struggling Suffolk musician, is on the verge of giving up on his musical career when he suffers a freak accident during a global 12-second blackout. At first, the headline is that he got banged up by a bus when the world went dark, but Jack quickly realized that the world isn’t the same as it was before the lights went out: it’s a world in which the Beatles never existed and Jack is seemingly the only one who remembers them. Determined not to let their music fall into oblivion, Jack works through as much of their catalog as he can, and before long, people start to take notice. As the prospect of international fame comes calling, Jack worries about the morals of finding success on the back of a lost band’s music while his friend/erstwhile manager Ellie worries that she’s losing Jack to the siren call of fame.

Again, the concept is just aces, and I like how the film plays with it. The story never explains what happened or why Jack is able to remember when no one else does, but it doesn’t need to. The hows and whys aren’t the point – the extraordinary event is the vehicle to get us to our story, which is what Jack does with this knowledge and how it changes his life. There are some fun notes in here. We get nods to other tweaks to the state of the world, other omissions (some which seem connected to the Beatles’ absence, others I’m not sure about.) Also, I kind of love that Jack doesn’t have the Beatles’ entire discography down cold. He has to work them up, remember how they go, even remember them at all – there’s a running gag of various random things reminding him of yet another hit he has to work on, and I get a kick out of his ongoing struggle to remember the exact words to “Eleanor Rigby.”

Another aspect of the film, one the trailers lean on heavily, is the irony of everyone hearing these songs for the “first” time. A lot of the comedy comes from this wrinkle – the trailers showed Jack’s parents nattering through his attempt to play “Let It Be” for them, as well as Ed Sheeran pitching “Hey Dude” as a better song title than “Hey Jude.” It’s also just an interesting part of the movie to explore, especially as Jack is first starting his endeavors. Armed with his Beatles songs, he’s prepared to immediately set the world on fire, but at first, no one notices. Yes, he has some of the greatest songs ever written, but when he goes to play them in a pub, he’s still just someone playing music in a pub, the sort that many people basically tune out. It takes time for people to start recognizing the greatness in these songs, but the more exposure he’s able to get, the more it snowballs.

All that said, I feel like the script could’ve used a few more passes. It’s by Richard Curtis, and yes, he wrote “Vincent and the Doctor,” but he also wrote Love, Actually, so there’s quite a gamut in there, and Yesterday covers a lot of that spectrum. While there are some excellent scenes and really funny bits, there’s also some awkward plotting and the love story is kind of a miss. Oh, and weirdly, this is a film that really hangs on people getting interrupted at inopportune moments. I swear, at least three major scenes feature Jack getting interrupted multiple times while trying to do something important, to either comedic or dramatic effect. It’s odd.

Overall, though, the good parts make up for the shaky parts and the cast makes it all work. In the first trailer, I was excited to see Jack played by Himesh Patel, who I’m not familiar with but who’s great in the role, bringing a nice everyman vibe to a wild situation. I love it’s not a role that “had” to be played by a South Asian actor (i.e., the main plot isn’t about immigration, assimilation, racism, etc.); it just is. Patel takes his chance to be a leading man and runs with it. The movie additionally stars Lily James (Rose from Downtown Abbey) as Jack’s friend Ellie and features the always-great Kate McKinnon, Ed Sheeran as himself, and Alexander Arnold (Rich from the third generation of Skins.)

Warnings

Light sexual content, drinking, some language, and a little violence.

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