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Review: “Across the Universe”
By Kyle | September 14, 2007
Today’s Post is running my review of “Across the Universe,” but unlike Julie Taymor’s Beatles musical, the review got cut substantially (for space). Here is the full-length version.
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SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER
ACROSS THE UNIVERSE review by Kyle Smith
 
131 minutes/PG-13 (nudity, sexuality, violence, profanity, drug use)
I saw a film today, oh boy. “Across the Universe” is an interesting failure, not a fascinating one. It isn’t quite for no one, but whoever greenlit it is going to be fixing a hole in the ledgers.
Still, if you’re going to flop, do it big, and director Julie Taymor does it huge with 30 manically reconceived Beatles numbers thrown into a Tilt-a-Whirl of 1960s images (or “Hair” cliches).
Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), a cosseted rich girl whose boyfriend has just been shipped off to Vietnam, and Jude (Jim Sturgess), a working-class Liverpudlian who has come to the States in search of his Yank father, wind up sharing a New York City loft with her Princeton playboy brother Max (Joe Anderson), a sexy Joplin-ish singer named Sadie, a Hendrix-styled guitar player called JoJo, and a cheerleader from Ohio. How did she get here? “She came in through the bathroom window,” explains Jude.
Taymor, who did Broadway’s “The Lion King” but is flailing on the big screen, has some wildly gorgeous visions but she has the concentration of a toddler, and she’s as sloppy as one. For instance, in a pleading near-whisper, that cheerleader sings “I Want to Hold Your Hand” against a slo-mo ballet of football tackling as she gazes upon her loved one  another girl. Sweet heartbreak, but the plot thread attached to it, like many others, winds up dangling in the breeze; two-thirds of the way through the movie, you realize that the two leads are involved in a possible love triangle with another character who has logged about four seconds of screen time.
Expository scenes bore Taymor. They don’t do much to fill in the stock characters and plotwise they do nothing except pull screeching bootleggers’ turns to steer into the next song. Out of nowhere, non-singer (also non-talent) Eddie Izzard plays Mr. Kite in an animated psychedelic-circus sequence that should have been cut. And shredded. And buried. Under concrete. It would have fit perfectly into the equally bizarre 1978 Bee Gees flop “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (with George Burns as Mr. Kite). The two flicks would make for an ideal double-feature pairing to be giggled at by college students in smoke-filled but tobacco-free rooms.
Some of Taymor’s pieces of flair are witty (there’s a sublime appearance by Joe Cocker, and five Salma Hayeks, in naughty-nurse mode, are sexy and disturbing singing “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” in a VA hospital) but many are just campy bluster (Bono, looking like a gay biker, affects a hick American accent and sings “I Am the Walrus”).
Randomly, the Princeton student drops out of school, making him eligible for the draft and us eligible for lots of napalm and naked Vietnamese. His trials lead to a Vietnam-themed “Strawberry Fields Forever” that grabbed me by the eyestalks, as did a gospel “Let It Be” that plays out against the Detroit riots.
The leads aren’t bad (except Anderson, a Brit who seems to think upper-class Americans talk like Mickey Rourke) but since this is the Beatles we’re talking about, in a generational epic, not bad doesn’t cut it. We need another Winslet and DiCaprio.
Painful gags involving Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, the Beatles’ record label and even Tom Wolfe (not actually a Beatle) clash with Taymor’s intent to portray all-consuming love and beautiful carnage: Opera and sitcom don’t mix. Nor does Taymor’s Broadway flightiness match her ambition. She approaches the shivery darkness of a genuinely impressive rock musical, “Pink Floyd the Wall,” by staging “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” as a bitterly funny satire starring Uncle Sam (motto: I Want You. And guess who “She” is?). But even in this dazzler, Taymor nearly ruins the effect by having her masked drill sergeants bust out Michael-Jackson-in-”Thriller” dance moves. The prospect of being flung into Vietnam could make a strong man crumble but no one was ever scared by jazz hands.
September 24th, 2007 at 12:04 am
you are dumb.
October 11th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
best movie ever. are you that narrow minded?
October 13th, 2007 at 8:07 am
you are so stupid!!
this is the best movie I have ever seen!!
October 18th, 2007 at 2:48 am
I write movie reviews for the Whitworthian and I have to say, you kind of need to get over yourself. I thought it was bravely experimental and original in a bizarre but entertaining kind of way - could you at least have given it that? At least it wasn’t another cookie cutter film. It was risky and it said something and it makes people think. As far as I’m concerned it draws the audience in on an insane but powerfully emotional level - think about the generations who experienced this stuff. You are narrow minded. critics suck. I hope this isn’t your only job.
October 18th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
I agree with you completely. I feel that any true Beatles fan just can’t stand a cover version. It’s like trying to improve upon perfection - why the hell would I want to hear anyone but John Lennon sing “Girl”? It absolutely turns my stomach that so many people think this is a great movie. True Beatles fans are downright appalled by this film and want nothing to do with it. My advice: you’ll get a lot more out of listening to the real Beatles songs and reading a history book than you will out of this horrific failure of a film. Hell, if you want something psychedelic, watch “Yellow Submarine,” at least it’s got the real versions of the songs.
October 18th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
This movie is appalling. The mere concept of making a musical trainwreck such as this, and defiling the Beatles with trite renditions of their classics makes me physically ill. I’m sure that I’m not the only one. No self-respecting Beatles fan could ever recognize this nauseating display as a quality film, or “homage.” I find it absolutely disturbing how Taymor actually thought that this was a good idea! Go listen to the real Beatles, and don’t waste your money on garbage like this.
October 26th, 2007 at 11:00 am
Everyone has the right to their own opinion and I probably don’t even have to respond to yours. I found the movie moving in many levels. Sure you can say all movies are similar to eachother, but in our day and age we need more FEEL GOOD movies like Hair. This movie had a unique combination of cinematography, choreography and a slight percussion, movement, and visual eye candy that makes it a win win romantic movie. There is something to say about this film, whether your a Beatles fan or not, which I feel most people are. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE. If you can’t see the creative way they expressed her appreciation for the BEATLES then your not a true fan. She used cleaver ways that only Beatle fans would know. George Martin expressed his Love, by his rearranging of the Beatles songs to the LOVE album, then The Love by Cirque Du Soleil in Vegas. You really need to not be so narrow minded in your reviews. Sure it wasn’t your cup of tea but HAVE A LITTLE LOVE in your heart. I challenge you to See it again through an open heart. Maybe then you can see all the hard work that went into filming a Live Art exihibit.
PEACE