What if you woke up one day and discovered that nobody but you knew who The Beatles were? Their history and their songs just ceased to exist, leaving you to wonder if you were going crazy or if everybody was in on some elaborate joke?
Well, that's what happens to Jack. Except, instead of booking an appointment with a psychiatrist (which I would be doing in his situation), he decides to turn his life as a struggling musician around by releasing all of The Beatles' hits as his own.
As people begin to hear Jack's songs and he catapults to stardom, his feelings of guilt begin to surface.
It's an interesting moral dilemma. While Jack is lying about writing all of the songs himself, no one would ever find out the truth, and even if they did they wouldn't believe him. The true geniuses behind the music technically don't exist, so who is he really hurting? It's hard to imagine what you would do in that situation.
It's hard to imagine I Want To Hold Your Hand inciting among today's teenagers the screaming, and frenzied admiration that it initially did.
But maybe a love song is just a love song, and something that can transcend time to touch people whenever they may first hear it. We can never know for sure what kind of effect the work of The Beatles would have if set upon the world today, but it is nice to imagine that it would still move people, the way that Yesterday has depicted it.
The cast is fantastic, I was especially delighted to see Kate McKinnon as Jack's manager, and Ed Sheeran (as himself), who is instrumental in kickstarting Jack's career.
Yesterday is a feel good rom-com, with a screenplay written by Richard Curtis how could it not be, and if you're after a light-hearted movie peppered with your favourite Beatles hits, then you should definitely head to the cinema and check this out.
*** SPOILERS BELOW ***
The following contains some spoilers, so if you want to keep some of the mystery stop reading now.
***SPOILER ALERT***
Just a couple of things that I wanted to add. Why, in this new world where The Beatles don't exist, does Coke and Harry Potter also cease to be? Is that related in any way? Or is it just another effect of this crazy alternate dimension? I understand why Oasis is no more, after all they were heavily influenced by The Beatles. I'm not sure if I'm missing something or not. I could Google it, but I don't feel that it would return any satisfying results, so thought I would just wonder about it instead.
The other thing I wasn't sure if I enjoyed about the movie, is the scene with John Lennon. It was necessary, because I was wondering why Jack hadn't Googled any of the band members, to see if they had ever existed and what they were up to. Were the guys that made up The Beatles alive? Were they in a band that hadn't become successful? Were they just regular people living their lives? So it answered that question. It also helped Jack to find his way, so it was a plot point that was needed for the story, for sure. But it just felt weird to me. I don't know, because John Lennon is dead, and they just got some guy to play him and imagine what his life would be like now, without all that history? Because I was expecting Paul McCartney? Maybe because it blurred the line of fiction and reality and I just wasn't into it. Either way, I just couldn't properly get into that part.
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