Review: NOWHERE BOY

As a Beatles/Lennon fan, I was very skeptical of this film. Especially with John Lennon being such a charismatic individual. I must say, they pulled it off well!

NOWHERE BOY is the true story of John Lennon’s childhood in Liverpool, England. As a youth, Lennon (Aaron Johnson) was constantly in trouble for his tom foolery and shenanigans in school. Raised by his Aunt Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas) and his Uncle, Lennon was brought up on classical music and rules. After his grandfathers death, he reconciles with the mother that gave him to her sister to raise at the age of 3-4 years old. Julia (Anne-Marie Duff) was a lovely woman, but fought a horrible case of depression that left her unable to raise Lennon herself. During their reconciliation, Julia taught him to play music, inspiring his first band, The Quarrymen. Through music, he would eventually meet a young Paul McCartney (Thomas Sangster) and George Harrison (Sam Bell). Lennon would never be the same once music touched his life.

The movie does a decent job telling the tale of Lennon’s childhood. The one thing to take into consideration is that it is, after all, a movie. Things are going to be left out, distorted, or crunched together to tell a story in a couple of hours. I was actually quite impressed by Johnson’s portrayal of Lennon. Whenever anyone plays an iconic historical figure (which Lennon truly was) the bar is going to be set high. Johnson did a great job of capturing Lennon’s dialect and attitude.

For those of you expecting more of a Beatles history, you will be disappointed. I was not a fan of the casting  Thomas Sangster as Paul McCartney. Don’t get me wrong, he isn’t a bad actor or anything, but he did not do McCartney justice. He looked way too young for a 15 year old, and didn’t really capture Paul McCartney’s personality or musical charisma. The kid could be great in other roles, but this was not the role for him.

They definitely went the route of basing the majority of the story on the dysfunctional part of Lennon’s upbringing. He fought with wanting to know his mother and knowing where he truly belonged. There was the definite pain of wanting to be with his mother and realizing just how sick she really was. She had a family, and her present husband was very worried that surrounding herself with Lennon would trigger her illness again. In a way, it did. The film depicts a very manic side to Julia at times, which would flip to depressed and cold in an instant.

The problem I have with the portrayal of Julia is that they made her estranged. Julia was always present in Lennon’s life. She was present until his death, when he was just 17 years of age. They did the same type of alteration with Mimi. Mimi was a disciplinarian, but she was not nearly as cold as the film portrayed. In fact, Lennon always spoke highly of Mimi. Smith always knew that she would raise him. She was quoted to say “I knew the moment I saw John in that hospital that I was the one to be his mother, not Julia. Does that sound awful? It isn’t, really, because Julia accepted it as something perfectly natural. She used to say, ‘You’re his real mother. All I did was give birth.”” Still, Duff and Thomas gave magnetic and fantastic performances.

Also, while I do not dispute that Lennon was quite the troublemaker that they portray him to be, they concentrated more on that side than his happy-go-lucky nature. I was pleased to see that they included his fondness for drawing. His cartoons and illustrations are simply brilliant.

For a movie, I think that they did a decent job of making an entertaining, watchable film. As a Lennon/Beatles fan, I really wish that they didn’t stretch things so much. I would have appreciated a more straightforward story.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars