Across the Universe is a romantic drama/musical set to a number of Beatles songs featuring the characters Lucy ("Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds"), her brother Maxwell ("Maxwell's Silver Hammer"), his friend Jude ("Hey Jude"), along with Sadie ("Sexy Sadie"), Jojo (mentioned in "Get Back"), and Prudence ("Dear Prudence"). Well, isn't that cute? Lucy and Jude join an anti-war movement after Lucy's brother Maxwell is drafted and sent to Vietnam. Others in the movement with Lucy and Jude is Sadie and Jojo, two musicians that resemble Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix so much, you'd swear at some point a Jim Morrison lookalike will pop up too, but probably not 'cause they wanna keep it PG-13. Why Janis and Jimi parallels? Why not Desmond or Vera or Molly or Julia or Sally or, hell, even Rocky Raccoon?
The good news for this movie is that you'll laugh out loud through quite a bit of it. The bad news for it is it'll mostly happen when you're not supposed to. This film may have had its share of critical acclaim (to be fair, reviews were mixed), and award nominations, yet that didn't stop me from wondering after the first few seconds went by, "How the hell did this get the green light?" When the film wasn't downright unintentionally laughable, it was eye popping, mouth dropping bizarre. Eddie Izzard as Mr. Kite and Bono (excruciatingly bad here) as Dr. Robert are two prime examples. Hey, see what they did there? In particular, Bono's scene belting out "I Am the Walrus" in his "Beyond" bus along with a number of other crazy, groovy, possibly drug addled hippies had me actually wondering just how high I really was. Keep in mind, I've never done drugs in my life. It's just that part in the film had me second guessing for a moment. Then we get the number of wink at the camera moments. Prudence shows up at the group's little Greenwich Village hippie pad and crawls through the bathroom window. When Sadie - yes, looking all sexy at the moment - asks where she came from, Jude and Maxwell respond back, hell do I even have to say it? The writing is so cutesy and overly sugary sweet with all its bull shit winks and nods I'm surprised the writers didn't use the pseudonym "Savoy Truffle". Hey, see what I did there. All this coming from one who does not have a bias against musicals (The Wizard of Oz, The Sound of Music, Fiddler on the Roof, and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street are just to name a few of the ones I love). All this coming from one who has really admired lead star Evan Rachel Wood's film career. All this from one whose favorite band just so happens to be The Beatles. Clearly a film like this more than divides viewers' reactions, even amongst Beatles fans. There will be some that think this is an "amazing adventure", and they'll laugh heartily at all the stupid little nods that are as subtle as screaming at the top of your lungs in the middle of packed crowd. I on the other hand kept running "Yer Blues" off the classic "White Album" through my head, "The eagle picks my eye/The worm he licks my bones/I feel so suicidal/Just like Dylan's Mr. Jones/Lonely wanna die/If I ain't dead already/Ooh girl you know the reason why." John and George obviously get a pass here, and I know both Paul and Ringo experimented with drugs during their heyday. I just find it hard to believe there's enough acid in this world to get either of them to agree to this. At least then they could've blamed it all on drugs once done watching it, after which Paul probably would wish he's dead and Ringo would, in fact, like to be under the sea... That is, after hurling himself off the London Bridge. Eh - I'll just blame Yoko.
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