Across The Universe: Let's Talk About It

So I went to see that movie Across The Universe the other day, and going into it i didn't really know what to expect. It looked like one of those movies that could either be amazing, or really terrible. And judging by early reviews it was viewed as the latter. The one thing i can say about it is that the music was actually really good. All good singers, and pretty good arrangements of the songs. We've all heard awful remakes of Beatles songs but these actaully worked really well.

The music was something that kind of took something away from the actual movie for me. Since I knew most of the songs i was paying more attention to how it sounded than seeing how it actually related to the story. I feel like this movie would be a lot better to a person who had never heard a Beatles song before in their life (which would be hard to find anywhere across the universe). If they'd never heard it they would be thinking of it in a way that tries to follow a story. Maybe i would have to see it again to really take it in. I tried as i was watching, and for the most part all the songs worked perfectly.

Before seeing this i thought it would be really cool to see a musical based on Beatles songs and to see how it worked. For the most part it was all good, but the thing that kind of got to me was character development. The first half of the movie is pretty much introducing everyone because there are so many characters, and you get kind of a vague look into who they are. There's only one character that gets mostly developed, and i'm kind of curious as to why that is since he's not even the main character. And there were also random characters that showed up for no real reason and had no real impact on the story. Probably just a way to throw in another song based on a name (Dear Prudence).

The only main gripe i have is character and story development. Before it came out and i'd only seen the previews it looked like a movie that would need to be a 3 hour epic to really develop everything. But that's not really how it went down. At 2:11 it did work decently, but it could've been a lot better. It's hard to base movie characters of songs that have been aroudn for years because you can't mold the songs to fit the characters. The story does have a pretty decent ending with good use of a classic Beatles song. If anything, go see the movie for the music because it's all pretty good. Or i guess you can just download the soundtrack (32 track version from iTunes).

I say check it out. But don't go in expecting something amazing. If you're a Beatles fan then you'll still appreciate the remakes. I'll give it a solid B-