Well-worn and (whisper it) not great animated chestnut. We’ve said it many times, but there’s more wit and invention in The Rutles’ three-minute parody than in this film’s entire duration. And said skit also cheekily renders all the cartoon Rutles’ voices as the same flat Liverpudlian drone, thus sniping at the poor quality of the original’s vocal stand-ins. Magical Mystery Tour, or even Help!, is always preferable.
I'm Not The Walrus
December 19, 2009 at 1:15 pm
You can whisper that Yellow Submarine isn’t very good, but I’ll shout from the highest rooftops in an unnecessarily overbearing fashion “It’s bloody great!” Weird that you should say the Rutles parody was better when the animation was done by the same people, and it looks more like a three minute tribute with a bit of rudeness added. Unless you like it because it gets it all over with quicker.
Imagine if George Dunning had made this film in the style of his American Beatles cartoons, that would have been awful, but instead they made it whimsical in the best way (OK, and druggy if you’re inclined to read that sort of thing into it). Dick Emery does one of the voices too! Plus Hey Bulldog is an excellent song.
It’s the best Beatles film apart from A Hard Day’s Night and everyone will recognise this after Robert Zemeckis gets his horrible CGI hands on it and ruins it in a couple of years’ time, mark my words.