Across the Universe

Ah, the glamour of life in the Eternal City. A friend had tickets for a screening that was part of the Rome Festival of Cinema, for 10.30 on a Saturday night. Of course one didn't ask “what for?”. My aversion to horror movies being well known, it wouldn’t have been one of them. But had someone told me I would sit through 113 minutes of Beatles songs wrought roughly into a teen-opera, I’m not sure I would have gone. Nor would I have enjoyed it. But Across the Universe is eminently enjoyable, in an extended music video kind of way. There are two weird parts to all this. One is that with the song lyrics all being very clearly enunciated, to move the story forward, you understand, it was clear that many of them make absolutely no sense whatsoever. The second is how eminently forgettable most of the songs were. That is, I can’t now think of many places where the song perfectly fit the moment such that I can remember both the moment and the song. And written by Dick Clement and Ian le Fresnais, two names from one’s yoof and no mistake. A good laugh, with a wonderful performance from Eddie Izzard, a neat cameo from Joe Cocker, some really trippy post-production and lots of little in-jokes (that aren’t very in). A fine way to spend the extra hour when the clocks go back.

My rating: 3 out of 5