Yesterday is a film that follows a struggling songwriter who suddenly becomes the only man on earth that remembers The Beatles, so he proceeds to rip them off to great success.
Whilst this was directed by Danny Boyle, this felt very much not like a Danny Boyle film. Yesterday is a quirky but also very simple little musical romantic-comedy with a bit of an interesting premise. Himesh Patel plays Jack, a singer/songwriter who is struggling to find anything resembling a successful career despite the efforts of his platonic best friend/part-time talent agent Ellie (Lily James) who also happens to have the hots for him. One day some random worldwide phenomena occurs and suddenly everyone has forgotten The Beatles (and other random things no longer exist such as Coca Cola and cigarettes). With The Beatles apparently wiped from existence, Jack takes to covering and recording every Beatles song he can remember. Fortunately he seems to have a great memory as he seems to recall all the hits chord for chord. Suddenly he’s being heralded as the greatest songwriter of all time and opportunity knocks on the door (in the form of Ed Sheeran).
From there, the film transforms into a love story. And honestly, the romance feels very forced. At no point in the first half of the film do we see Jack reciprocating any romantic feelings towards Ellie. It’s not until Ellie spills the beans on her feelings that Jack suddenly wants her. And that’s what the final act of the film is all about. I’m shocked they didn’t call the film ‘All You Need is Love’ because that is straight up the entire theme of the film. But I guess they may have felt that that would have been too on the nose.
I’m just going to go into spoiler territory because I had gripes here. Jack struggles with his new life of fame and realises that all he wants is Ellie. Yet Jack’s sudden feelings for her come across as so forced that it feels like a case of wanting what you don’t have. The plot then doesn’t quite know what to do and so it fabricates conflict. It puts Ellie into a new relationship as she starts to date a guy that had originally helped them record Jack’s earlier Beatles rip offs. The climax of the movie is that Jack plays a big concert at Wembley, and he puts Ellie on the giant jumbotron screen and professes his love for her in front of the entire world, in the process exposing himself as a fraud that ripped off these songs. He intentionally kills his own career to show that he only cares about her. But there’s a problem – Ellie is in a committed relationship already, and Jack has been a massive jerk and put her on the spot in front of her boyfriend and the entire world. But wait a minute, it’s not a problem after all, because it turns out she’s cool with it and her boyfriend is nice enough to give her his blessing to break up with him and get with Jack instead, and the boyfriend conveniently winds up with Ellie’s best friend. So the movie wraps up in a very convenient, neat and completely unrealistic package that also makes Jack look like a completely unlikeable jerk.
Everything in the first two acts of the film was fine. I really liked the set up. I like the concept, it’s quirky and unique. And the film is funny in places. It has typical deprecating British humour, which I enjoyed. Kate McKinnon also stands out as the purely greedy and selfish record label agent who is so transparently trying to take advantage of Jack. But beyond the concept, the film doesn’t quite know what to do with itself. It does present us with a few other people who also randomly have memories of The Beatles and such, but the film doesn’t explore deeper in that direction and kind of waves them away as unimportant things thrown in to attempt to build some tension in a movie that largely lacks anything of the sort.
It’s an easy to watch film that’s funny at times, has some nice performances, and is probably a must watch for any diehard Beatles fans out there. But the last 30-minutes or so really went off a cliff for me.
Rating: ★★1/2
Zero Stars 