A struggling musician realizes he’s the only person on Earth who can remember The Beatles after waking up in an alternate timeline where they never existed.
What if The Beatles never were? This concept, well-advertised in the advance trailers, will certainly come as no surprise to prospective viewers. The real question instead becomes: What can director Danny Boyle deliver from such a promising premise? Fortunately, the resounding answer is quite a lot.
Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) is a struggling singer-songwriter paying the bills as a warehouse grocery part-time employee. Ellie Appleton (Lily James), his manager since childhood, eagerly tries to raise Malik’s profile in various venues across the British Isles without much luck. In the course of events, the two characters display a warm chemistry that ushers this friends-become-lovers yarn along nicely.
In a film such as this, the plot manufactures perhaps the smallest portion of the fun. Rather, the timeless music of an immortal band constitutes the real star. The action moves along quickly to the incident requiring suspension of disbelief – in this case, a brief global blackout. The resulting alternative reality provides more than enough momentum to drive what otherwise would amount to a conventional love story.
Once Malik realizes that only he knows the legacy of the greatest singer-songwriter compilations in the 20th century, he sets about performing the enduring Beatles tunes to – at first – decidedly indifferent audiences. In fact, in the original script written by Jack Barth (who shares story credit), the protagonist never attains celebrity.
However, in the updated version, screenwriter Richard Curtis takes a different tack. With so much powerful material at his disposal, Malik quickly catches the ear of an aspiring music producer, who offers a modest record deal. Later, a real-life Ed Sheeran gets wind of Malik’s debut album and things really start rolling.
Sheeran introduces Malik to his manager, Debra Hammer (Kate McKinnon). Impressed by Malik’s extraordinary songwriting abilities, Hammer takes on a promising new client even though she thinks he’s sort of grungy. McKinnon’s portrayal of Hammer, a music industry executive with shameless mercenary motivations, hits close to the bone in several scenes.
Malik’s tribulations soon begin. Passing off classic songs as his own, the previously unknown performer rockets to stardom filching a seemingly inexhaustible catalog of Beatles compositions. Accruing a karma tax of monumental proportions, Malik must choose between love and fame, between vast wealth and integrity.
Comedic payoffs abound throughout. As proof that so-called creative types can screw up almost anything, the production team persuades a reluctant Malik that the lyrics to “Hey, Jude” would sound better as “Hey, Dude.” Similarly, his proposed album titles of “Abbey Road” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” are derided as too obscure or lacking marketing punch.
In a wonderful scene late in the film, Malik encounters a childhood idol – who could have been someone famous in another life – now comfortably settled into his twilight years. The septuagenarian remarks pleasantly that he has lived a happy life. Malik skeptically questions whether the old man considered his journey successful. Without missing a beat, the down to earth elder retorts that a happy life is a successful life.
For past and future Beatle’s fans, what was old becomes new again as “Yesterday” briskly reminds audiences of the group’s enormous talents. Critics have noted that the great composers over time were often prolific, but invariably churned out significant quantities of duds relative to the masterpieces. What sets The Beatles’ record of accomplishment apart from most others is the extraordinarily high ratio of hits to misses.
To paraphrase Voltaire, if The Beatle’s did not exist, someone would have to invent them. To our delight, Jack Malik does just that. A touching movie, full of surprises, “Yesterday” serves up a counterfactual tale about the nearly inconceivable – a world that actually turns in absence of the Fab Four.
In theaters Friday, June 28th
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