Yesterday

So much of this movie was charming, brilliantly acted, and inventive, however somewhere around the middle of the movie, (the missing the train scene) it just turned into a big farce. The plot just became unbelievable, it also turned corny and over-sentimental. Of course I accept the whole movie was built on supernatural premise but what follows must hang together and keep the audience rooting for our hero.

What was good:

1, I loved the music, I think this made the movie.

2, Jack Malik, played by Himesh Patel, did a fine job, he has mastered irony and deadpan, we were all wanted this antihero to have his dream.

What was challenging;

1, the plot was either so corny or so contrived, some plot twists were just unnecessary and added nothing.

2, Elle, played by Lily James, lost our sympathy, she was presented as needy and pathetic and just as the culmination of him achieving "their" dream, she tries to make him choose between his dream and her.

3, The conclusion was unsatisfactory, he wanted to be a musician and was fabulous at it, he ended up a teacher, big mistake.

Overall, the was an overly contrived feel good movie, I enjoyed whilst I was watching it, but feel cheated and unsatisfied at the end.

It is a funny and heartfelt romantic comedy co-written by Richard Curtis and directed by Danny Boyle. Himesh Patel (in his feature debut) plays a rock guitarist on the point of giving up, getting ready to go back to teaching, despite the urging of his manager-roadie, Lily James, who has been in love with him since middle school, although he has never noticed. When she drops him off, he gets on his bike to pedal home, when suddenly the lights all over the world go out and he is struck by a bus. When he wakes, he discovers he is in a different world, where no one has ever heard of Coca-Cola or cigarettes.... or the Beatles. When he plays a Beatles song for his friends, they claim never to have heard of it before. He thinks they are joking, but as it dawns on him, he desperately writes all the Beatles songs, and is hailed as a great new talent, and taken under the agency of a Mephistophelean talent agent, played to glowering perfection by Kate McKinnon.

There are some wonderful sequences in this movie, and this is what Curtis excels at, like the incoherent buddy, played here by Joel Fry, who is utterly useless, and the assortment of friends. More than that, the recent spate of musicals about rock performers gives me some hope that we will see a revival of musicals, even if they are for the moment, of purely the diagetic variety.

Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) is a struggling singer-songwriter in Suffolk, England. He is a "complete failure". His only fans seems to be his friends especially his lifelong best friend Ellie Appleton (Lily James). She has an unrequited love for him. One night, the lights go out and he gets hit by a bus. He wakes up to discover that The Beatles never existed. There are other surprising changes like the lost of Coke and Wonderwall. Jack tries to remake the Beatles songs with mixed results until he is contacted by Ed Sheeran who wants him as his opening act. Debra Hammer (Kate McKinnon) is Ed's money-grubbing Hollywood producer.

I love this premise which has the positive effect of including some great music. The general plot is fine although I would change some of the details. The filmmaker already made a few changes. In a delete scene, he actually sleeps with the Russian woman. In the movie, I treated his admission to Ellie as a joke. It's a good change. Their romance has to be kept pure which is why her dating Gavin is a little problematic. It's a false note that the movie is forced to correct with that big gesture. It's a terrible gesture. Putting an unsuspecting woman on a jumble screen is putting all the pressure on her and it's a bad way to break up a relationship. Jack and Ellie are fine but I would redo almost their entire love story. First off, Lily James is too beautiful. When a woman like her say things like that to any man, that man needs to stop and address it right away. He should close the door, block it with a chair, and have a sit down talk with her. It's actually a great moment to reveal The Beatles to her. The secret was definitely eating away at him and he has only one person to whom he would tell. For drama's sake, it's possible that she would get angry at him stealing music from some unknown band and she would walk out on him. That would make the final giveaway of the music that much more powerful as a gesture and it would make their reunion much more compelling.

As for the moments I love, I love Ellie's talk with him after the hotel cancellation. I love, love, love John Lennon. I love him so much that I want the movie to close with Jack bringing Ellie to meet him. Patel's sad sack performance is initially frustrating but he does grow on me as long as he doesn't lose his teeth. Ed Sheeran is pretty good at being Ed Sheeran. In general, the plot is fine but it could be so much better. I love the two Beatles fans and I really love their twist. In those two characters, there is the theme of the movie that Jack needs to hit much harder. They want to bring the music to the world and that is Jack's salvation. Those two could help him finish Eleanor Rigby. The film could have hit that point even harder than it already does. This movie has a cool premise. It's good. It could even be better.