NEW REVIEW: "Yesterday" (2019)

MRMOVIESETC REVIEWS:

“Yesterday” (2019)

"Can I just say one thing? Just to warn you. I've spoken with the doctor, and you will walk again. 
But you've lost your beard, and, um, two big teeth."

My immediate reaction after watching “Yesterday” was basically a straight wash. The takeaways were some really fine acting from both Himesh Patel and Lily James, seeing and hearing the more famous of the Beatles’ catalog played in a modern setting, and the whole “What if The Beatles never existed except in the memory of one man” premise that was destined to create more questions than it could possibly answer, yet could still work at face value without putting much thought into it.

I wanted to give the film a chance to settle before I started putting this review together. I was disappointed with it, but also had to take into account the possibility that I wasn’t in the right mood or perhaps too tired at the time. Who knows? Maybe it just needed a day or two to click. Besides, all the pieces were there to make a cute rom-com with impeccable music taste work, and for the most part, it did. So why didn’t it land for me? That’s the question I needed to find the answer to.

As most know already, “Yesterday” is about a struggling singer/songwriter named Jack Malik (Himesh Patel), whom has a charming voice and all-around good skills, but even with the help of his adoring manager, Ellie Appleton (Lily James), the gigs barely elevate past pub level, making escape from living with his parents to tour the world a growingly dim fantasy. By random stroke of luck, or, I should say, glitch in the Matrix that makes all the electricity on Earth to randomly flicker out that causes  Jack to get hit by a bus in the dark while riding his bicycle. Jack then awakens to a world where the Beatles never existed save for, strangely, his own memory and his alone.

After a few days go by and the shock of this vastly different musical landscape starts to truly sink in, Jack reluctantly begins to take credit for writing some of the biggest hits the Beatles ever wrote and performs them to the public. At first, the songs don’t appear to land, and immediately I thought, “Oh, Christ, here comes the ‘Lost Generation’ stab from Papa Boomer”, but thankfully the film did not go there, and soon Jack’s success starts to pick up steam after his “original’ poetry catches the ears of mega-celebrities like Ed Sheeran. Before long, Jack is making the rounds in England and visiting all the famous landmarks from various Beatles songs and album covers in order to gain inspiration.

If the impeding conflict wasn’t obvious enough, all the fame pushes Jack to a crossroads between being away from Ellie - whom has confessed feelings for him – and achieving his dream of becoming a global superstar. Oh yeah, and the whole heavy conscience because plagiarism-of-the-highest-order thing.

Okay, so one of my main grievances initially with “Yesterday” was the writing. I feel as though so much more exploration could have been done here instead of the absolute bare bones, but I think I’ve more or less forgiven that. Like I said, the profound nature and consequences of a plot like this could have effortlessly taken the film down a rabbit hole for which there was no bottom. It’s okay to let sleeping dogs lie on this one, and that’s what I’m going to do.

Yep, here it comes…

BUT – I don’t know – there’s still a big something missing. I might get some flack for this but, “Yesterday”, to me, doesn’t have much of a soul. In the past, I’ve referred to this as surface gloss where everything looks pretty and proper on the face, but instead of a heart underneath, it’s a void. Hey, for all I know, maybe that was the point since the popular culture environment of music in today’s age is equally plastic and glossy. If that’s the case, fine, but since the screenplay was already stripped down to the rom-com basics, it’s not as clever as it tried to be.

Hell, I’ll go ahead and say it, I got kind of pissed off at a faux-cameo at the end of the movie (no spoilers) that got reduced down to nothing more than moral exposition mapping out what anybody watching this film had already said in their own heads about twenty minutes into it.

“Ah, that’s what it is all about! *slow clap* Got me right in the feels.”

Obviously I’m no screenwriting prodigy, or any kind of prodigy, but goddamn it, that could have been played so much better and really given the film a huge boost at the finish line. For the sake of cheesy analogies, it was like watching an epic guitar solo crash and burn on the final note.

To clarify, there is plenty to feel good about in “Yesterday” too. Jack is a character one can easily route for, even if somehow his story arc didn’t move me like I hoped it would. Patel gives it his all in this film, and I’m sincerely hoping to see him again in future endeavors. Lily James was also rather irresistible, though I do wish she had gotten a bit more to do with more depth outside being the doughy-eyed object of affection. Last, but not least, probably some of my favorite scenes were run by Kate McKinnon as the label rep in charge of Jack and his album production. Leave it to Kate to take something like “stereotypical corporate sleaze” and make it hilarious.

The production and musical numbers have a lot of energy as well, especially in the quieter moments. I found Patel’s voice more appealing without all the noise and distractions going on around him, even for the purpose of squeezing in a few jokes. I don’t know right offhand how much prep work he had to do for this, but the guy has some decent chords, and that’s no small thing to consider when trying to do justice to a library of this magnitude.  

Look, I can totally understand why “Yesterday” has created some passionate fans. As a few have said to me already, it’s The Beatles, so what’s not to like? Fair enough on that point alone, but I guess I might be the outsider on this one that walked away lukewarm. After a while, I got tired of watching all the missed opportunities walk by unnoticed when it really would not have been difficult to get them included.

It’s not a terrible or even bad film. That being said, it wasn’t great or memorable enough for me. It is what it is.

“Yesterday”: 6/10