Saturday, June 07, 2008

Across the Universe - 2007

To begin with, we've had this from Netflix for most of a month and only tonight were we able to watch it. Watching movies together as parents is incredibly difficult. Also, the weeks of waiting have probably put to much weight on our expectations. Frankly, we were disappointed.
The theory is simple, tell a story about a group of people in 1968 and use Beatles songs to tell it. The execution was well done, as each song was masterfully produced. Really, the movie is beautiful to look at and sounds incredible. Why were we disappointed? The story sucked. It was a set of plot points put together to move the movie on to the next song and barely anything more.
Couldn't help but think of 'Moulin Rouge' while watching this. The idea is similar and they even use some of the same music. The difference is that 'Moulin's' story is strong enough on it's own that it holds your interest while its songs serve to enhance it. Not so here.
As a set of high concept Beatles videos, it works. As a movie it fails. We both thought that it might have been better on the big screen. The downside is that we couldn't then fast forward during the dull parts. I really don't want to rip this type of movie too badly because I love the idea behind it, but this one really didn't work.

1 comment:

Meigan said...

Thanks for the review. I'd been wondering about renting this - based on your opnion I think I'll skip it; it sounds exactly like something we would not enjoy!