Across the Universe review

Who doesn't like The Beatles? Probably not many people, one would think. Well, I decided to rent Across the Universe over The Brave One(a kickass revenge movie, might I add).

I wish I hadn't.

The film, starring Evan Rachel Wood and Jim Sturgess, follows around a group of young adults in New York in the turbulent late sixties. They must deal with the Vietnam War, the draft, Civil Rights, homosexuality, drug culture, and learn to grow in love all at the same time.

I can't really say it's a bad movie, but I can say i disliked it for a number of reasons, but first I'll give some good.

The music is great. The problem is, it's The Beatles, so I can't really credit the movie for that. The actors sing pretty well, but it isn't up to par with other musicals I've seen(and I haven't seen many, so that's not quite a good sign). Bono has a really cool cameo, and his scene is particularly amusing. The film is at it's best when it goes all psychadelic and almost Lynchian on you. Sadly, there are only two or three of these sequences.

Those positives aside, the film is one big jumbled pile of pretention and cliche- two things that I can't stand in a film. It obviously thinks it's making a big statement about life, love, and dealing with change, but it's so damn predictable! I could tell from the get go what was going to happen throughout the movie. As a result, I was really just hoping for the "story" to pass and more songs and cool visuals to come up.

The message of the film might have been better if the film was a little more, I don't know, SUBTLE. I mean, how many fucking love songs do we need? How many references to revolution do we need? Do we really need to see a bunch of naked men carrying around the statue of liberty through a miniature Vietnam? I mean, please! Use a bit of judgment! Make it more subtle, streamline the film(it's at least 20 minutes too long), add some depth to the characters(some of the characters get so little screentime you wonder why they were even in the film), and overall just rewrite the painfully lovestruck chick flick cliche scipt, and you might have a good film.

It's like someone just decided, "Hey, I like The Beatles! Lets make a movie where all the characters are named after Beatles songs, insert a whole bunch of turbulent '60s imagery, and add a sappy overdone romance all set to Beatles songs! Oscar Gold!"

Really, there's no reason to see the movie unless you REALLY like The Beatles, or have a girlfriend over. That's probably the only thing the movie is good for- getting your significant other to fall for you.

50/100