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Saw Across the Universe.
Now, I'm definitely not in the intended audience. About 25% of the songs I wouldn't have known were Beatles songs if not for knowing that they were all Beatles songs.
Taken simply as a movie it really isn't all that good. The story is very simple and surprisingly linear. It felt about an hour too long and several times the songs felt crammed in (particularly in the beginning).
So, as a movie it isn't good. But I found myself watching it not as a movie but as a type of artists portfolio where the flaws of one item don't necessarily reflect on the merits of the others. A cinematic gallery exhibit, if you will. When in a gallery I may very well pass up the first 20 pieces saying "ho hum" "nice try but no" "insipid" etc., but if the 21st is a piece where I just want to sit and look at it for a couple hours then the whole thing is a success.
And the very disjointedness of the thing allows for that. I'd say about half the pieces did absolutely nothing for me. They were flat, literal, and/or simply boring. Most of the others had some element that kept them entertaining. But three or four were absolutely magnificent in staging or audacity. T.V. Carpio's "I Want Hold Your Hand" as she ditches small town Ohio. Max's induction. The 1-2 punch of "I am the Walrus" and whatever the next mostly spoken piece was after that with Eddie Izzard ("The Benefit of Mr. Kite"?). Definitely when Taymor was willing to go the surreal and psychodelic it worked better than when she was playing it straight.
Those made it worth it and so I don't care that as a movie it really isn't very good. That is the strength of the genres of action movies, musicals, and porn. They can be 90% suck (excuse the pun in relation to porn) and redeemed by the 10% great.
And I don't know if this will annoy Steph, but when Bono first appeared on screen, for about a second and a half I thought it was Robin Williams.
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