YESTERDAY – Review

When I first saw the trailer for YESTERDAY, I found the premise; a struggling musician takes advantage of a world where Beatles songs suddenly no longer exist, irresistible, but wondered if that gimmick could sustain itself for two hours. Playing like a warmhearted Twilight Zone episode, YESTERDAY is a likable, hummable enough movie that coasts on clever charm and goodwill for quite a while, but eventually takes a long and winding road to precious whimsy and contrived rom-com.

Himesh Patel stars as Jack Malik, an aspiring musician in London unhappy with the direction of his career.  Jack’s biggest supporter is Ellie (Lily James), his closest friend and manager, who books gigs at local music fests where no one stops by his tent to hear his songs. Jack’s about to throw in the towel when he gets a magical break in the form of an unexplained worldwide 12-second power outage that coincides with him getting creamed on his bicycle by a bus. After he awakens in the hospital with a couple of teeth missing, he realizes something else is absent as well: the existence of The Beatles (also Oasis, Coca-Cola, and Harry Potter – I’m unsure about Paul McCartney’s Wings). When Ellie is at his side when he awakens, he asks if she will still be there for him “when I’m 64?”. “Why 64?” she inquires. “Because…the Beatles” he replies, but she’s clearly clueless as to this reference. When he plays Yesterday on a new guitar Ellie has gifted him, their friends praise the song, but fail to recognize it, because The Beatles as music fans know them never existed. Jack soon cashes in on the dearth of Beatle-mania and claims all of their classics as his own. Recording them with a little help from Ellie, Jack’s renditions soon fall into the hands of musician Ed Sheeran (playing himself) and before long, he’s a rock megastar with Debra Hammer (Kate McKinnon) serving as his caustic manager.

There is much to enjoy in YESTERDAY but it’s smaller than the sum of its parts. Some early scenes are endearing, as Jack attempts to perform Let It Be for his perplexed parents and struggles to recall the exact lyrics of Eleanor Rigby. Himesh Patel has good comic timing and is an appealing lead. His voice does resemble Paul McCartney’s, but he never adds a personal touch to the performances. Some might argue the songs are perfect the way they are, and that may be true but it leaves much of the film’s running time feeling like I was sitting in a Karaoke bar listening to this guy croon a lot of Beatles tunes (17 to be exact, for which the licensing must have eaten a large part of the film’s budget). Genre-hopping Director Danny Boyle, brings little of his style to the film.  It was written by Richard Curtis (FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL, LOVE ACTUALLY) and plays more like one of his light and fluffy comedies than something edgier Boyle would deliver. With the exception of McKinnon, all of the characters are far too warm and cuddly. When the story briefly stops to explore the serious implications of Jack’s ruse, such as the ethics of passing off someone else’s art as your own, or a look at how these old songs might be embraced today, it quickly switches back to the sugary love story that everyone knows how will turn out.  Lily James is perfectly bland as the girl next door while Joel Fry as Rocky, Jack’s sidekick/roadie, adds some much-needed humor. Surprisingly, musician Ed Sheeran stands out, earning laughs thanks to many jokes told at his expense. A little of Kate McKinnon goes a long way, but she at least adds some acerbic touches. The less said about a late scene when Jack discovers the fate of one of the fab four in this alternate universe, the better. This reveal seems designed to give the audience goose bumps (and there were audible gasps at the screening I attended), but I found it uncomfortable and a bit ghoulish. YESTERDAY is a crowd-pleaser, and I feel like a curmudgeon for not grinning and lapping it all up, but it’s far from a great movie.

2 1/2 of 4 Stars