Across the Universe (2007)
133 minutes
Rated PG-13
Directed by Julie Taymor
Starring: Evan Rachel Wood, Jim Sturgess
Grade: C-
Here are a few adjectives that could describe this film: ambitious, risky, daring, creative, artistic, bold, and even weird. Unfortunately, none of these adjectives mean that the film was “good.” And to add to the formula, how could a movie-musical that takes its events from the songs of The Beatles lack the adjective “unique” or “ground-breaking?” Well, simply because there was nothing original about it.
At 2 hours and 13 minutes, Across the Universe overstays its welcome with 33 classic Beatles songs thrown hazardously into your conventional love story. The main characters are Jude (Sturgess) who’s going to America to search for his father he never knew and Lucy (Wood) who watches her boyfriend leave for war. Although the opening scenes don’t do anything to really capture your attention other than the immediate use of songs, like “All My Loving” and “It Won’t Be Long” it’s a solid example to show how music is supposed to work in musicals: by advancing the story forward… Too bad only a handful of the songs actually do that.
Meanwhile, the bulk of the songs painfully pauses the story just to allow the characters to sing and prance around through sometimes weak choreography, and sometimes weird displays of psychedelic imagery. That’s a big NO-NO that separates the good musicals from the bad ones… but again I guess I have to take notice that all of the songs weren’t written directly for the plot.
The story thickens, but by no means does it meet the requirements of a strong plot. Jude finds his father in Princeton and then bumps into a wild student, Max, who is Lucy’s brother. Everyone meets during a Thanksgiving dinner and soon after the rebellious Max drops out of school and moves into an apartment in New York dragging Jude along with him. The already conventional story only gets more cliché as it goes along. We all know that Lucy and Jude are the love interests, even if we never heard a Beatles song in our life. And the powers of the love story Gods tell us that they have to fall in love, and then out of love, only to fall back in love again. Oops, did I ruin the movie for you?
The dialogue is laughable… almost like a song with a rhyme-scheme where you can intuitively complete the lyric before it’s said. There’s not much fault that could be blamed on the actors though, who look the parts very well but are thrown into a confused production that makes it impossible to stand out from the music.
I do admit, two specific scenes that stand out in my mind are the songs “Across the Universe” (especially during the repeated lines “Nothing’s gonna change my world”) and when Max checks into the military with “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” playing. These songs were the highlights of how this great idea of a Beatles musical could be so successful.
But outside some brilliant moments, the overall film falls greatly short. At no time did I feel the realism of despair during the 60’s and its period of war. And I was completely unconvinced by the vague love attraction between Jude and Lucy. As the inevitable ending was approaching, I was hoping that it wasn’t going to go over-the-top with cheesiness… but I was let down again.
As I expressed my dislike of the film to all of my friends who either loved or adored it, I found myself being attacked by Beatles lyrics, especially one who told me not to look into the story so much and simply just, “Let It Be.” But I’m sorry, I cannot say I enjoyed Across the Universe solely on the basis that it was not a good film.
Posted by Rob Eng 
