You’ve got to hand it to writer-director Julie Taymor: she’s nothing if not ambitious. But just because you’ve got the courage to do something crazy doesn’t make it a good idea.
Across The Universe is a musical based on nearly three dozen Beatles’ songs. These familiar anthems are interpreted and played out as part of a 1960s coming-of-age drama.
Jude, Jim Stugess, is a Liverpudlian lad who comes to America to seek out his long-lost da. Instead, he meets Max, Joe Anderson, and falls for his new pal’s sister Lucy, played by Evan Rachel Wood.
The upheavals in culture and politics see the trio decamp to bohemian New York where their orbit expands to include sexed-up songstress Sadie, guitarist JoJo and lesbian waif Prudence.
Jude, Lucy, Maxwell, Sadie, Prudence, JoJo – that’s right, the characters and their situations are contrived from Beatles songs.
Even dialogue, 'Where’d she come from?"; 'She came in through the bathroom window." – is lifted from lyrics.
Sometimes it works, often it’s pretty awkward.
There are some mind blowing moments though.
The Strawberry Fields and Happiness Is A Warm Gun sequences are totally trippy, while a gospel version of Let It Be is stirring and Eddie Izzard’s Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite is very funny.
Bono, obviously, can sing but his performance as an astronaut of inner space has gimmick written all over it – and the film’s coyness about drugs is annoying.
The cast do adequate versions of the songs, but they rarely rise above your average cover band. Instead they make you really miss the originals, which have stood the test of time. And with over 30 covers rolling out one after the other it’s like being force fed a bland all-you-can-eat buffet.
The story and characters never rise above mediocrity either. Cliché piles on cliché and the effect after more than two long hours is that the audience is laughing at Jude, Lucy and Sadie and their heartfelt warbling.
All you need is love, sure, but sometimes an editor helps immeasurably.
As a bad movie whose occasional bits of brilliance I can recommend, this cobbles together two and a half stars.
