Across the Universe
DIR: Julie Taymor • WRI: Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais • PROD: Matthew Gross, Jennifer Todd, Suzanne Todd • DOP: Bruno Delbonnel • ED: Françoise Bonnot • DES: Mark Friedberg • CAST: Evan Rachel Wood, Jim Sturgess, Joe Anderson, Dana Fuchs, Martin Luther, T.V. Carpio

Jude (Sturgess), a Liverpool dockworker, travels to America in search for his father. On his travels he meets up with happy-go-lucky, soon-to-be-dropout Max (Joe Anderson) and his beautiful sister Lucy (Wood). Max and Jude run off to experience life in New York City, where they rent a room from a sexy R&B singer named Sadie. Lucy joins her brother in New York for the summer and, before you know it, Jude and Lucy fall in love. Despite death, war, revolution, cultural and political upheaval, they realise that all you need is love.

Director Julie Taymor's attempt to pay tribute to the music of the Beatles and the emotion, colour and revolution of the ’60s ends up as a painful two-hour pull-your-hair-out disaster. What must have looked oh so good on paper doesn’t work on screen. You would be forgiven if you thought you were taking a ‘trip’.

The songs are a bigger distraction than the visuals. With only a few exceptions, most of them are out-of-place. They are shoehorned in simply to increase the film's Beatles music content. The expected approach in a musical is for the songs to advance the story. In Across the Universe, the narrative pauses roughly every seven minutes so the characters can break into song, then resumes when they're done. Does it work? NO! This approach makes it impossible to identify with the characters or be interested in their circumstances. The singing is good, sometimes soulful and on the verge of being great, but it just doesn’t appear plausible in a film where the songs disguise what is ultimately a flop.

Once you get past the music, you will see there is no storyline, in fact it is all a bit chaotic. Jude and Lucy fall in love, Max goes to war, Martin Luther King dies, the film just goes on and on and it just doesn’t tie up. With guest appearances from Salma Hayek, Eddie Izzard, Joe Cocker and our very own Bono, you’d wonder if they got so caught up in the idea of a Beatles musical or a ’60s revival that they forgot to read the script or think about what they were doing to their credibility. Bono, you used to be cool.

The film is too long and too far-fetched. What we should appreciate as colourful, vivid and extraordinary is undermined by the lack of story and the overuse of songs. But if you like the Beatles, and the idea of hearing about 20 covers of their work fills you with a perverse joy, this may be the movie for you.

Sarah Bardon
(Read biog here)

Rated 15A (see IFCO website for details)
Across the Universe is released on 28th September 2007
Across the Universe – Official website