Across The Universe

After seeing some pretty sweet trailers, I went to see Across the Universe last night. The new Julie Taymor musical uses all music by The Beatles, and has been hyped not only due to its musical values, but also Taymor's visual spectacle. I was really looking forward to the film, and while there were moments of brilliance, more often then not I was unimpressed.

It's a long movie. Ringing in at 131 minutes, it better have a damn good plot, but we'll just say that wasn't the case. The Beatles put out some of the best music ever, but that doesn't mean you need to include 33 of their tracks in the movie. What they really should have done was cut out about half of the songs and added about 3 times the plot. I can understand Taymor's insistence to keep all of her wonderfully psychedelic clips in tact, but I think that was a big mistake. It also felt like a bunch of snippets - music videos stuck together back-to-back with awkward transitions.

In terms of the talent... I thought Evan Rachel Wood was a great hippie, but a shitty singer. Jim Sturgess was talented, but sounded and looked just like Ewan McGregor. In fact, the opening sequence sounded exactly like a clip from Moulin Rouge. Bono's cameo surprised me - I didn't know he was in the film, and when his character started singing I said to myself, "Man, that guy looks like Bono. It would have been great if they would have cast him." Part of the reason I thought it wasn't him was because his voice sounded absolutely terrible on "I am the Walrus." Eddie Izzard was a definite bright spot.

It was visually stunning, but otherwise unremarkable.

As for the soundtrack, the 16-track version is available through iTunes and everywhere else, but there's also a 31-track version available which includes every vocal track and one of the three instrumentals.

[mp3] Jim Sturgess - "Across the Universe" (Original Soundtrack) | iTunes

[mp3] Dana Fuchs and Martin Luther McCoy - "Oh! Darling" (Original Soundtrack) | iTunes