Across the Universe review
Whether or not you will enjoy this movie depends mainly on your tastes, and your stomach for musicals. Because that’s really what this film is: A Beatles musical. I’ve maintained since I’ve seen it that the first half is very well suited for Broadway.
At first watching people who were not the Beatles singing Beatles songs was a little disconcerting. A teenage girl at a dance is not the first person I would expect. It begins to grow on you though, particularly when the energetic and passionate parallel (named Sadie) of Janis Joplin appears. The Jimi Hendrix character, Jojo, was not nearly as impressive however, and I was disappointed to find that he never really did any amazing guitar work–though I was definitely holding my breath for it during a rendition of While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Eddie Izzard, Joe Cocker, Salma Hayek, and Bono all made recognizable cameos, which were fun to spot.
Another factor in whether you’ll get anything out of this movie is how much you need a plot to drive you along, because it was certainly flimsy in this one. The characters weren’t very well developed either, though they were certainly a lot of fun to watch. And thankfully our main man, Jude (played by Jim Sturgess) did a very good job and was a joy to watch…and not just because of his resemblance to Paul McCartney which was so subtle that it took a few minutes to really hit me, but was afterward undeniable.
There were some aspects of this movie which were very powerful, especially when the Beatles mean the world to you, though there were flops and just plain confusing decisions on the writer’s part. This is not to say that it was a simple film, however. Though I could probably explain the basic plot in a sentence (which I won’t, you’ll just have to see it), I wouldn’t be able to explain the movie in its entirety in fifteen. It was beautifully shot and mostly well-sung, and for the most part, a very fun movie. 6/10.
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