Across the Universe (2007)

Memorable, crazy movie

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Jude and Prudence show up to town to allow some more songs from the Beatles to be played. Yes sir, Across the Universe is a musical throwing it back to the 60s for a love story of sorts torn away with war and strife and LSD. If this isn't making too much sense, you're not alone. Despite a couple 5 minute naps, I will attempt to review the film as a whole.I think the movie took the easy route right from the start, and it never recovered from the decision. What I'm talking about is story structure. Obviously, all the songs are already there. So how did they make the movie? They took the songs, and they attempted to branch a story out of them to fill in the gaps. The result is high-quality music videos with small periods of "story" in between."Well, Mr. Smarty Pants, do you have any better ideas?" I do, but it's harder to pull off which is why I said they went easy. There are two types of musicals: Those that have the songs in mind and try creating a story around them (like Across the Universe), and those that have a story already in place that will be propelled forward by the songs. Personally, I feel the latter is almost always the better formula to work with, but even then it's not a perfect system. I'm just saying that it could have been a huge turn-around for this film. I mean, there might be a decent story in there somewhere, but I didn't really find it nor have the patience to put effort into searching for it.As this is a musical, we should definitely talk about the songs. Give credit to the film for trying to give modern updates to the songs with flashy graphics to help, but the characters don't add anything because nobody cares about them through the story. I will say, however, one of my biggest issues is that I think most of the songs are worse versions than the originals. Maybe that's a personal bias, who knows. My prime example is "I Want to Hold Your Hand;" the film version slows it down. That ruins the entire beat, and the lyrics aren't powerful enough to carry the weight of a slower song. The vocals of the majority of characters is great, but not everyone hits the right notes, and vocals alone aren't worth an update of these songs.Despite my inner Scrooge to humbug at these modern folks and their attempts to reminisce on previous times, I still found myself singing along with such classics as "Come Together," "Revolution," and "Hey Jude." I wouldn't even call myself the biggest Beatles fan, but those that claim to hate the band probably just haven't heard the right songs.This 2 hour + movie is not worth it for the few notable songs featured. The story drags on, and it ends up giving you the feeling of "Oh, is this the last song? Nope, here's another scene." And thus it goes on and on. Maybe I should just let it be. I don't know.Not sure where it would have fit in, but not seeing "Yesterday" featured was a big bummer. There are a couple other songs I would have preferred, but I honestly am not sure if this was album-based or what and I don't care enough to research it.Just did a little research, and I'm still unsure of how each song was chosen to appear in the film. Oh well.

I'm not a big follower of musicals, but I loved this film. The Beatles songs were very well done and the interpretations were striking. Touches a lot of bases throughout the film...love, music, politics, etc...and does so with grace.

Across the Universe (2007): Dir: Julie Taymor / Cast: Jim Sturgess, Evan Rachel Wood, Joe Anderson, Dana Fuchs, Martin Luther McCoy: Exquisite visual extravaganza set to the backdrop of Vietnam. Jude travels from London to meet his father. He befriends Max who is a free spirit threatened with the prospects of being drafted. Jude falls for Max's sister Lucy whose boyfriend dies in the war and she starts an anti-war protest. Other characters include Sadie, a promising singer who becomes involved with her guitarist. Directed by Julie Taymor and highlighted with revised Beatles songs that are given a brand new approach. These musical numbers are accompanied by striking visual images to express the emotion within each scene. A highlight regards a cheerleader walking across an aggressive football field while singing "I Wanna Hold Your Hand." Jim Sturgess as Jude is a free spirit and artist who never intended to fall in love but he does. He is illegally a citizen who fights his way back to his desired love. Evan Rachel Wood as Lucy voices her protests and political agendas before finding freedom in an artist. Joe Anderson as Max is her brother whose reckless lifestyles leads to the serious nature of war where the reality of death and violence leaves wounds, both physical and mental. Dana Fuchs as Sadie finds her place in music. The musical numbers express the era that encase our memory. Score: 10 / 10

Phonie acting, emotion, and rape of classic works of art by a legendary band. I watched it once in the theaters when it first came out, and one more time recently. It rarely happens that my conception of a film remains the same or gets worse.In this case, it definitely got worse. I feel that being more interested in art in movies as I've gotten older, really demonstrates how bad this film really is. Before it was simply a dislike of the horrible way the actors were trying to sing the music differently for my younger generation. It was just absolutely disgusting and pathetic. They tried really hard to change it to stay in tune for this younger generation that they warped the music and took away its meaning. I mean, you can't say those Beatles songs mean the same thing in this movie. AT ALL. The songs held meaning for a decade in history, and in this movie, though they tried to add it, it focused on a stupid and phone love story. The acting was so horrible, I think you'd be lying to yourself if you didn't think about rolling your eyes at least a couple times during this film. I'll get back on it a little later. But these are just surface things about the movies. Back to the songs though. JUDE! LUCY? Strawberry fields? You've got to have a stupid sense of imagination if your eyes didn't roll right to the back of your heads. Did people seriously sit there and go... "HOW CLEVER!" Its absolutely pathetic because this film's only support is that of songs from a legendary band. Rewatching it, I definitely disliked the film more for destroying the classical and true meanings of the songs. Perhaps more so because the characters were played pathetically. If you think about it, Jude's story feels forced into the film simply to be clever and play "Hey Jude" and have some (if any) connection to the roots of the music by having a character from Liverpool. His character doesn't really fit in the movie though. He really has no emotion, real drive, reason for thinking the way that he does. If you think about it, every other character has a stronger sense of feeling or doing what they do because they have a stronger back story. Jude is as useless as Prudence if you think about it. Prudence's only reason for being in the film is to add Dear Prudence song. And to prove it, she's gone the rest of the film until the end. You have all these random songs being played because they are good songs, and the film tries to put them by adding a random character or scenario and having these random plot strings that kind of trail off and die. As far as actually filming, the acting is terrible, but I've said that a couple times by now. Why are Jude and Lucy in love? They met at a bowling place, and she shared a simple story with him about her boyfriend dying. Next thing you know she goes all the way to New York and sleeps with him. That'll do it I guess. I'm not sure Jude makes Lucy feel special enough for the connection to transfer to this longing for one another at the end. To be fair, Bane/Mad Max who is pretty much Lucy's boss and secret lover in reality, had a stronger connection with her than Jude. I'm really surprised at the lack of connection. This moves to the camera angles, art, and color added to make scenes look better in the film. The film did use color correctly and even had good concepts of film angling, but it was done totally inappropriately. We can sense a lack of connection with Jude and Lucy really... in my opinion when they get on the bus and find the circus. The reason being because the story is bringing about the decade more in its revolution. Where Jude is having fun, Lucy is living a revolution. I get the love part in the water with the blue and green color, but again, inappropriate, considering the plot has moved on. We continuously see a lack of connection, and all of a sudden we have Jude and the use of love with red in the Strawberry painting. How random, and also convenient to have a Strawberry Fields concept thrown in there. We see how the film has separated the two characters. Lucy is in revolution due to personal losses, but then the film also artificially keeps Jude in his own bubble. The only explanation is he stays in the apartment all day doing mediocre art. There are no real camera angles that depict the true meaning and plot of the film, except when they are all drugged up. Thats all fine and dandy, but all of a sudden Lucy and Jude are to be taken seriously.All in all, bad film. Bad acting, along with a plot that is all over the place due to the fact it is trying to be clever with famous Beatle songs makes it completely pathetic.