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.
The Beatles are one of the biggest music acts of the past five decades. Even after being retired for many decades, the band still has a solid fan base with their classics still in rotation to many. The idea of the film “Yesterday” is very intriguing and when you add a filmmaker like Danny Boyle you can’t really go wrong. Personally, the film falls a bit short of how great it could be but it’s still a good film.
Himesh Patel plays Jack Malik, a down-on-his-luck musician who is managed by his friend, Ellie (Lily James). After a world blackout that leads to Jack getting into an accident, the world forgets some of its biggest pop culture entities, one being The Beatles. Patel and James are good separately but together, they don’t have the best chemistry. Quite usual to these kinds of films, the two have a bubbling love story but I honestly didn’t feel the connection between the two. The rest of the cast is okay (Ed Sheeran plays himself in the movie) and none of them really standout throughout the film.
Story and direction are fine but they don’t reach their full potential. For a good part of it, the sort of fantastical style in the movie fits the plot but sometimes it creates a distance between the audience and the true heart of the story. The rise to fame Malik goes through is surprisingly fast and you almost don’t feel like the story doesn’t feel it supports the choice for it to be that fast. A great thing the story does is bring up random things the world has forgotten, separate from The Beatles. It brings great comedic moments that are amongst the most memorable of the entire film. Lastly, the music. The music is obviously great and has these great moments of callbacks to some of the band’s classics. As someone who has never listened to The Beatles, I felt like the film uses the catalog as a crutch. I do feel like if you’re a Beatles fan you’ll have a blast with “Yesterday.”
In theaters Friday, June 28th
