Across the Universe

If you’re the type of person who gets high and talks to the magic shadow people, then this movie won’t be anything special. If you’re not well-acquainted with special brownies and hypodermic needles, this will be the closest you ever come to an acid trip. An elaborate paean to the music of the Beatles, "Across the Universe" is a string of stunning music videos cobbled together by a paper-thin (read: nonexistant) plot. For anyone who cares, the basic story follows Jude (a scruffy Jim Sturgess), who comes to America from Liverpool in search of his absentee father. Once in the states, he meets and befriends Max and his sister Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood, in a role made to define the one-note character). What else is there to do, naturally, then move in together with four or five friends and live out a counter-cultural paradise in New York City? Everything goes just swimmingly, smoking weed and attending anti-war protests, until Max gets drafted for Vietnam. Suddenly, they’re not just smoking weed, they’re smoking weed with purpose. Will Jude and Lucy manage to stay together in an ever-changing world? Will Sexy Sadie manage to keep singing without her spark o’soul bassist JoJo? Will Dear Prudence ever come out of the closet? (Answer: yes.) Does anybody care? (Answer: no.)

The truth is, director Julie Taymor cared WAAAAAAYYYYYYY more about creating a visual and musical feast than believable or empathetic characters. Taymor, who made a name for herself on Broadway as the designer behind "The Lion King" and "Aida," pulls out all the stops for the frequent musical interludes, which are not only visually spectacular but also quite clever, even witty. The viewer is swirled through a psychedelic cross-country trip to the strains of "I Am the Walrus" and dragged across Harvard while Max and his frat-boy buds regale Jude with "I Get By With a Little Help From my Friends;" then booted through the draft board with Max as Uncle Sam rears out of his recruitment poster and declares "I Want You So Bad."

The star of the show isn’t Sturgess but the Beatles’ music itself. The movie makes very free with their songs, slowing them down, speeding them up, giving the lead vocals to women, changing the instrumentation, arranging songs originally performed solo to be sung in a group and vice versa. The result is a fascinating and original take on all these old standards—everyone knows them in the original; these arrangements shake them up a bit. Add the meticulous matching of just the right character to just the right song and you have a knockout soundtrack: Sturgess and Wood, as the leads, get several selections and prove they have the vocal chops to do them justice, most notably in Jude’s wistful rendering of the title song and Lucy’s rollicking "It Won’t Be Long Now." Add genius cameos from such notables as Bono ("I Am the Walrus"), Eddie Izzard (ad-libbing a hilarious "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite"), and Joe Cocker (as a homeless subway bum gritting out "Come Together"), plus stellar performances by torch-singer Diane Fuchs ("Helter-Skelter" "Oh! Darling"), and a gospel-choir arrangement of "Let it Be," and you have something really incredible.

But as incredible as the music and spectacle may be, the fact remains that the whole thing has a heart of fluff, and offensive fluff at that. The gratuitous sexuality completely spoils a perfectly lovely rendition of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," sung by a girl…to a girl. The whole movie romaticizes recreational drug use with cloying naivete (go ahead! it’s fun! you get to talk to the shadow people! and have lots of sex! it’s great!). So if you can stomach the countercultural garbage, it’s worth a see simply for its magnificent music sequences (and rent something with Tom Hanks in it if you want a plot.) If you can’t, then content yourself with the soundtrack. Even non-Beatles fans won’t be able to help being exhilarated.