Saturday, April 8, 2017

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978)


IMDb plot summary: Small town band hits it big, but they must battle a nefarious plot in the music industry.
Directed by Michael Schultz. Starring Peter Frampton, Barry Gibb, Robin Gibb, and Maurice Gibb.

Oh, this movie is so weird. Going into it, I didn't know it didn't actually feature the Beatles, just their music (though if I had noticed it was made in '78, I would have known, I guess) so at first it was a bit of a shock when Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees were wandering around singing their songs. The most obvious comparison here is Across the Universe, another movie relying on Beatles cover songs with barely any plot. While this isn't nearly as visually striking as Across the Universe and the songs don't have the same emotional impact (AtU at least attempts to craft a story around the songs), there's something sort of charmingly haphazard about it, particularly the fact that there's almost no spoken dialogue at all. The movie jumps from song to song with no pretense whatsoever that it's making any sense, and every moment is so deliberately just an excuse to sing another song. I have to kind of admire the absurdity of that, even if I'm struggling to think of anybody I know I'd ever be able to recommend this to. I'm not going to complain that I watched an hour and 50 minutes of decent covers of great songs. I had a good time, even if the movie is mostly nonsense.

2.5 stars.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band < Death at a Funeral (2007)
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band > Secondhand Lions
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band > My Girlfriend's Boyfriend
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band > Nacho Libre
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band > Monsters University
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band < Blow Out
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band < Harry and the Hendersons
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band < Punch-Drunk Love
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band > Planes, Trains & Automobiles
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band > Melinda and Melinda
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band < Alice Adams

Final spot: #1375 out of 2604.

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