Julie Taymor
Across The Universe

LA RECENSIONE

Hoping to finally have a pleasant Sunday, after a week of boredom, I decide to go see "Across The Universe" with the intent of listening to some good music and watching a film openly against war, America, and everything else. But right from the start, when the foolish lead actor begins to sing Lennon's masterpiece "Girl," I realize I've wasted 7 euros. The film narrates the story of two friends, particularly focusing on the love between a guy and his friend's sister. Set mainly in New York during the '60s, it tries to recreate the various protests against the Vietnam War and the typical atmospheres of psychedelic happenings. In the film, an extremely stupid and boring musical, effects upon effects are used, believing they recreate the environment, but they just make it heavy and foolish. The direction makes immense errors: in the first part of the film, in fact, we see a scene where kids, whose look fully indicates the scene was set in '64, '65, sing "With A Little Help From My Friends" released in '68.
The characters all have references to real-life figures like Jimi Hendrix playing in the band with a certain "Sadie," who from her attitude and the scene where you see the car, you understand is Janis Joplin (stupid but true). There are other characters like "Prudence," "Lucy," taking names from Beatles songs to find a logical link to connect the poorly interpreted songs with the characters. There are also illustrious characters such as Bono Vox as a possible "Timothy Leary," Joe Cocker as an old drunk. The film is a total rip-off, a horrible musical in which Beatles songs are exploited and truly ruined. Few are the acceptable versions of the songs in the film, among which "I'm The Walrus" only because of Bono's splendid voice.
The only scenes I liked are two: one shows a moment of protest, the other a splendid moment where a comparison is created between strawberry juice and the blood spilled in Vietnam, but unfortunately, here too, everything is exaggerated in the end. To finish, a concert on stage where the happy and content characters sing "All You Need Is Love". Happy ending and another horrible film to add to the 21st century's collection of horrors. 

I hope that after reading my review, you won’t go to the cinema to see this crap, because if you do, my seven euros will have truly gone to waste. Thank you