Yesterday (2019)

"Yesterday skips over the cliche and campy to be one of the best films of the summer." "‘Yesterday’ is the Beatles-themed feel-good movie of the summer." "A glowing tribute to The Beatles and their music, this is both a toe-tapping pleasure to watch and a smart, occasionally scathing look at how we get things wrong."

.......Really?

Okay, to be fair, there's plenty of reviews which reflect the bad things of this film as well, but I hadn't looked up any reviews regarding this film. All I had heard, from word of mouth, were good things about it, which was surprising when I first saw the trailers for this. I mean, one person finds he's the only one who knows the Beetles, which gave me the impression that either something wiped the Beetles from existence, or young people nowadays don't know who the Beetles are, which, believe me, isn't that far fetched.

So yes, 'Yesterday' finds wannabe musician Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) struggling to make it in the music industry. One night during a worldwide power cut, Jack is struck by a bus and admitted to hospital. When he comes to he finds that no-one else remembers the Beetles, and decides to use their music to make a career for himself.

First things first, I really hate this concept. Not the whole "world has forgotten the Beetles" thing, oh no, that's actually interesting. It's the "stealing someone else's work" bit I don't like. It's not like he has a debate with himself whether it's a good thing or not, he spends the evening looking up any references of the music group, then decides to use their music.

That being said, Himesh Patel does a decent job with the role, as well as being a good performer, not really putting a foot wrong. Meanwhile it's always great to watch Lily James (as Ellie Appleton), though she is underused, which is probably because they cut out a love rival which makes some of her actions a bit bizarre. Kate McKinnon meanwhile provides a brilliant performance as the "evil" agent who tempts Jack with success, with some...comments on the music business.

And then there's Ed fucking Sheeran.

Oh boy I did not like him. You know, he's a good musician with some catchy songs, but...he's not the best actor let's say. His performance on 'Game of Thrones' felt out of place and, bizarrely, he feels out of place here. He just seemingly pops up out of nowhere, having saw Jack perform on local television. Even more weirdly, they seem to try and build up his appearance, with his face being obscured by a fancy glass design, this is despite the fact that he was named about five minutes beforehand. The only real decent thing, was watching him having his spirit broken when Jack's "new" song beat Sheeran's new song. Then they went to the other extreme by saying Ed Sheeran was just warming up the world for Jack, effectively saying Ed Sheeran is the greatest musician of our generation.

Really?

I mean, admittedly I can't think of many other musicians who would be better suited for the title. Adele? Taylor Swift? Sam Smith?....Justin Bieber I don't know! It certainly seems like they put in Ed Sheeran's contract "we will name you the greatest musician of our time in exchange for breaking you"

And that actually raises an issue with the film. It's not that the Beetles are wiped from everyone's memories, the timeline has actually been changed. Oh yeah! They do still exist, they just never formed the Beetles. And because of that, that should mean the entire landscape of the music industry should be completely different to what we know now. The Beetles are widely considered the most influential band of all time, so if they never existed, the music industry shouldn't be the same. There should be a much wider impact to removing the Beetles from history.

Speaking of which, by removing the Beetles from history, and then trying to use their songs to kick start your music career, it raises the question of whether the Beetles would actually be successful in today's era. The film sort of touches on this, both in a good and bad way. It praises the Beetles by, as mentioned earlier, saying their songs are vastly superior to Ed "greatest musician of the modern era" Sheeran's, and having people stunned into silence by their songs, but then suggests that their songs are dated, like "Hey Jude" being changed to "Hey dude" due to Jude sounding old, or the names of Beetles' album covers being ridiculed. With the songs originally being released in the 1960s/70s, people can understand the subject matter of the songs. Having them "originally" released in 2019 raises a serious doubt about how successful they would be.

So, to be fair, there isn't anything inherently wrong with the film. It's well acted and the songs are well performed, while the film has an interesting premise. So, why didn't I particularly like it? Well, in all honesty, it's because of a number of issues. I've already touched upon how they treated the Beetles legacy, in particular how Jack basically steals someone else's work to further his own career.

As mentioned earlier, Kate McKinnon's character, Debra Hammer, is a character designed to tempt Jack by promising him success. So it seemed like the film was going to lean towards Jack having fame, success and/or money go to his head, and we've already seen that done a hundred times. 'Rocky III', 'Citizen Kane', 'The Candidate', 'Dead Rising 2: Off The Record'

Hell, it's been done in 'The Lorax'!

But 'Yesterday' is so focused on making Jack likable, they never go all the way. Jack is always hovering on the edge, never really making him become egocentric, but not really debating enough whether he should come clean, therefore it doesn't seem he go through any lessons.

There is one other thing I want to touch upon, but it's basically a spoiler so I'll leave it for the spoiler section.

So, whilst there isn't anything really wrong with the film, it's largely a waste of time. The acting and performances are good, but with a cliche script not really knowing what it wants to do it fails to capture the attention of the audience. It has clever ideas but never fully explains them or go all the way with them, so it's an unsatisfying payoff. And for a film that, primarily for the audience, is supposed to celebrate one of the best bands of all time, it doesn't really do that.

In all honesty, there's not really much that the film offers, there's no real reason why it exists. It's just a karaoke film; someone who can sing really well singing covers of another band's music, for which, again, there's a hundred films like that as well. 'Sing', 'Rocketman', 'Bohemian Rhapsody', any of the 'High School Musicals'. You can get the exact same experience by looking up The Beetles on Youtube, minus the story. If you enjoyed the film, good for you, but I can't see why this film would be considered anything other than background noise.




Spoiler Section

Nothing of consequence happens to Jack. Two people reveal they also remember the Beetles, but rather than tell anyone, they just tell Jack they're happy that the Beetles songs continue to exist, thanks to Jack. So, they could have been cut from the film and nothing would have changed. And then! Jack goes to an Ed Sheeran concert to reveal that he didn't write the songs...but only after he performs again. If he was truly repentant he would surely just tell everyone rather than have one last performance for his ego.

And then! He finally reveals that he didn't write any of the Beetles songs, and that he tricked everyone. He stole other people's work, he plagerised another band's work, he's a fraud, a liar, a thief. But he's in love with Lily James so no-one but Kate McKinnon cares! On top of that, since the Beetles have been wiped from the timeline, no-one knows who Jack plagerised, therefore he gets no punishment! The only thing that happens is that his music career is tanked, but that's a self inflicted wound, Jack knew what he was doing.

So yeah, I wanted to put this into the main conclusion above, but as it goes over the ending, it was a spoiler.