Yesterday

Star Gent’s Better Lone Key,
Part Dub, Fanned

Yesterday
UK/Russia/China
2019 Directed Danny Boyle
UK cinema release print

I should have seen this movie a lot sooner than I did, catching it now just on the last week or so of its cinema run. I’ve been listening to songs by The Beatles for most of my life now (well, around three quarters of it) and since their music plays such a huge part in this movie, I really should have got there sooner. Truth be told, I was kinda put off by the idea that this film was a romantic comedy... nothing against them, just not too many modern ones (post 1950s) done right. You get the odd couple per decade or two that are something special and, luckily for me this time around, this one is pretty good. Also, I had a slight accident recently so the day I had scheduled to go and see this was a day when, frankly, I wouldn’t have recovered enough to be able to walk to the cinema anyway.

But I got there in the end and this film was worth the wait. I find Danny Boyle a bit hit and miss as a director so I don’t go and see everything he does but this does have an almost unique premise so it was always going to make my ‘to see’ list at some point.

If you don’t already know the plot, Yesterday tells the story of main protagonist Jack, played by Himesh Patel, who is a struggling song writer/performer who, in spite of his brilliantly optimistic manager Ellie, played so well here by Lily James who kind of steals every scene she’s in, can’t make it big performing his own songs enough to get any interest and give up his job at a local supermarket and nor can he see the thing dangling right in front of his face... that he and Ellie are obviously attracted to each other but that he’s very late to the party in this regard. Then, one night when he has decided to call it quits and is riding home on his bike, the world experiences a phenomenon which causes all of the electricity everywhere to black out for about a minute. Because of this, a double decker bus hits Jack on his bike and he is knocked unconscious, waking in hospital with two big front teeth gone and lots of injuries which eventually heal. Now, the interpretation of what’s just happened here is left to the audience... did something happen to the world or did something just happen to him? Is there a religious intervention happening or did physics just slam the door. Did he even survive the bus? That’s all left up to you but, not long after he’s integrated back into his everyday life, he discovers that things have changed.

And the most prominent change to drive the plot is, nobody has heard of The Beatles or any of their songs. So, after some thinking, Jack starts ‘writing’ the hits of The Beatles and it’s not too long before he is on the road to what promises to be phenomenal world success. However, The Beatles aren’t the only things missing from the world as Jack remembers it and, it turns out, things which were once missing from our world are also now back in place... in a kind of changed way (no, don’t want to elaborate on that because it’s a bit of a spoiler).

And the film is brilliant, with some nice performances in addition to the two leads supplied by such wonderful character actors as Joel Fry, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Kate McKinnon  and some guy I saw in a Bridget Jones’ movie called Ed Sheeran who... well, frankly, I had no idea who he was when I saw that one and I still don’t really know but I’m guessing he’s some kind of modern pop star or some such. I’ve seen his face around somewhere.

Boyle keeps things nicely paced and there are some great comic moments which work in spite of the straight-laced delivery of Patel in the lead... or more than likely, work because of it. There are also some really nice little shout outs to The Beatles and I gave a chuckle when, for instance, one of the ‘post it’ notes with the titles to the songs that Jack is trying to remember, in a blink and you’ll miss it quick shot, is Revolution 9. Anybody who knows The White Album would tell you that this is an impossible track to cover. Not to mention the moment when Jack decides to launch his new album with a rooftop concert. There’s also a nice use of Beatles needle-drop, when the worldwide phenomenon that, effectively and depending on your interpretation, resets the world is just taking place... here the director uses the end build up from the Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band track A Day In The Life to heighten the tension. I just wish Boyle had stuck with it because he really could have done with that sustained piano chord once Jack is hit by the bus.

There’s also a kind of sub plot in the movie when you worry just what is going to happen to Jack’s plan when two sinister looking people start following him around the world with the lurking realisation that... Jack might not be the only one who remembers The Beatles. The pay off to this build up is absolutely brilliant, it has to be said... the film was moving so fast that I actually didn’t see things coming. Which is always a good thing because movies are mostly so predictable these days.

My one minor criticism, if I had to have one, is Jack’s ‘final solution’ to the problem of the guilt he is suffering for finding fame from the back of the songs of The Beatles. It makes no sense whatsoever because nobody in the version of the world he has suddenly found himself in is getting hurt by his deception. On the contrary, people’s lives are richer for having these songs in their life. So, yeah... there’s no real logic to the end of the movie here but, hey, at least it made a heck of a lot more sense than Avengers - Endgame (reviewed here) so there’s that.

The other possible problem, for me, is that the songs that the film makers chose to use from The Beatles’ huge play list are, with the exception of All You Need Is Love, tracks I normally skip. All the truly great Beatles tracks (again, with the exception of the brilliant All You Need Is Love) such as Strawberry Fields Forever (mentioned but not used), Eleanor Rigby (almost used but alas, unremembered in terms of the lyrics by Jack), I Am The Walrus, Tomorrow Never Knows, I’m Only Sleeping, Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite, Magical Mystery Tour etc, from the 1966 - 1967 period where the group were at their absolute best, seem strangely absent.

Still, even so, Yesterday is a really great little movie and, frankly, Himesh Patel plays the role in such an interesting, throw away manor, while Lily James is... just wow... that I really didn’t worry too much that many of my favourites weren’t included. Lily James needs to be in more stuff, methinks. It’s a good little movie about a surreal premise where, as it should in real life (and hopefully always does), love wins the day and makes things right again. I’d grab this one again on Blu Ray, for sure.

On The Paul

Paul US 2011

Directed by Greg Mottola

Playing at selected good and marginally

tolerable cinemas across the UK now!

Warning! The article doesn’t this time include any really aPauling spoilers in it... but I had to go ahead with a spoiler warning anyway so I didn’t waste that aPauling pun!

It’s strange. I might have said this before but when I go and see a movie directed by Edgar Wright and which has Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in it then I tend to have a bizarre delayed reaction to said movie. Usually my first viewing ends up a little “meh” and then I feel sufficiently haunted by the odd memorable scene or two to go back to the cinema again and then it all hits me properly the second time around and I find myself having a really good time with it. That’s exactly what happened to me with both Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz... it didn’t happen with Spaced (I liked that straight off although I was a post-Shaun watcher) but then again... that was a TV show, not a movie.

So anyway... when Scott Pilgrim VS The World came out I thought this curse of the delayed whammy and necessity to double dip into my cinema entrance budget would be broken and future generations of my family line would be able to go and see movies by “The Wrightster” free from the threat of the insidious “meh but interesting” response and it’s debilitating effects on the family coffers. However, as I probably mentioned in this review “right here”, I had exactly the same kind of delayed response to a Wright movie without the presence of “The Peggster” and “The Frostier” in it and so, by this point, I was pretty sure that it was a reaction to Edgar Wright as opposed to the two starry stars who populated his first two features.

But then I went to see Paul. Which I was quite looking forward to because I like Pegg and Frost together, think they have great onscreen chemistry and I really needed a laugh as I was, and have been, feeling pretty downhearted of late (please leave sympathy or possible promises of money in the comments section below this article).

And that was two weeks ago. And I’ve only got around to writing up this review now.

“Why have you only got around to writing up this review now?”, I hear you ask inside my head in something resembling faint interest but which doesn’t try too hard to disguise the element of mock enthusiasm in your tone.

Well I’m glad you ask. Basically because I had exactly the same delayed effect to Paul, a film which stars these two actors but, in this instance, was not directed by Edgar Wright. And so I’m kinda wondering what’s going on now. The film is loaded, absolutely choc full o’ science-fiction and fantasy references and so, of course, I’ve now had to come to the conclusion that films by these kinds of people are so jam packed with eclectic, postmodern allusions that my poor mind needs to take it all in on the first sitting before it can begin to relax and take in the bigger “surface details” of these kinds of films on their own merit. That’s my latest theory anyway.

So I wanted to give Paul a fair crack is what happened and so I went back to see it again but, this time, instead of going by myself and sitting somewhere out of the way where I could hide in my little, black leather raincoat, I took a girl with me who I knew would laugh (and jump) at anything she saw on screen and that way, if I didn’t have a good time with it, I could always use her to gauge what my reactions should possibly have been during certain scenes (and maybe ask her to explain some of the more “young peoples” references should I have not gotten them).

So there I was, armed with my double scoop of Cherry Garcia/Cookie Dough Mix ice cream in one hand and a young, enthusiastic (okay, possibly giggly) girl in the other (metaphorically). True the girl in question is married and, true, ‘tis not to me, but I still trust her enough as a gauge for “what normal people like” and by that point the ice cream had frozen my few remaining brain cells anyway.

As it turned out... I needn’t have worried. On my second viewing, free from the strain of trying to spot as many sci-fi references as possible, I found that Paul was not the mere amalgam of overwrought set pieces I’d first perceived it as and that it’s actually a movie with a guiding and warm heart and it actually hangs together quite well on it’s own and ends up being a movie much more than the sum of it’s parts.

There’s a lot of good things going on in Paul... there’s some nice comic acting and some more than competent comic timing in the movie (not least from the film’s titular CGI alien character voiced by Seth Rogen) and a nice little twist from one of the characters that some people may not actually see coming... all wrapped up with a romantic subplot which may feel a little tagged on but sentimental old fools like myself are a sucker for that kind of stuff. There’s also a nice sense of set up/follow up throughout which I hadn’t noticed the first time around and which helps give the movie a sense of cohesion and self-containedness (despite the numerous references). For example, the scene where Paul resurrects a bird from death and the subsequent fate of that bird (which had my friend in hysterics in the chair next to me) is used to establish certain traits of the main character so it can be used to set up a scene towards the end of the movie.

I think, if I’d have stayed with my first impression of this movie I would have basically reported that it’s an entertaining enough, geeky movie made by geeks for geeks. As it happens, it is, but my friend who I took with me, Orange Monkey, also got a lot out of it and I know most of the gazillion or so Star Trek references would have meant nothing to her. It’s a testament to the writing and directing on this picture that the movie manages to successfully straddle a thin line between geekery incoherence and warm-hearted fun without straying too far into either territory to begin alienating any of the possible audiences that this film may find. A nimble trick and one which a few modern filmakers might do well to learn from.

And for those people who regularly read my blog reviews (and thanks for that, it means a lot to me), yes I will be getting this one on DVD when it gets a release... so that’s a big thumbs up right there then. For people who don’t regularly read my blog... go check out Paul. It’s a nice little movie with a fair few inventive homages to science-fiction classics and it has its heart very much in the right place.

Oh... and, yeah, I almost forgot... it’s kinda funny too. Especially when you see how Simon Pegg dances!