Yesterday is written by Richard Curtis. Yesterday is also directed by Danny Boyle. While not diametrically opposed, I see 2 competing strong viewpoints at war for what this movie with its spectacular premise is supposed to be. Is it the guy who did a not so good movie called About Time with an equally good premise wasted? Or is creative control in the hands of the guy who reinvented the zombie movie? Unfortunately for Yesterday, Richard Curtis wins, which means one of the great movie conceits in recent memory is wasted for amusing but forgettable romantic wooing.
So what is this great premise? Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) needs a miracle to keep his music career. His manager/wanna be partner Ellie (Lily James) is supportive, but even her effervescence has no effect on Jack’s decision. Then the miracle happens. A world wide blackout leaves Jack hospitalized….and the only person on the planet who knows the songs of The Beatles. Jack then “gets to work” remembering all The Beatles’s songs, hoping to create a Beatlemania for himself. But perhaps at the expense of Ellie.
I’m pretty sure Richard Curtis underestimated how truly juicy and spectacular his movie premise is. Even people like me who aren’t big Beatles fans acknowledge the power of their songs and how they swept the globe up in a cultural fervor. My mind was racing at the possibilities of this movie: could an Indian man conjure the same fan curiosity as the 4 mop top kids from Liverpool, or even worse: what if he was NEVER discovered despite the greatest song collection on the planet? How would 2019’s version of song and album rollout work? What replaced Beatlemania for people in the world? What does Jack feel about his potential popularity even though it’s totally stolen? Richard Curtis pays some of these questions lip service, usually as the punchline of a joke. Google searches of “Beatles” or “George Paul John and Ringo” yield laughs every time. The funniest most interesting bit is when Jack is trying to roll out his first album, and he’s surrounded by 50-75 “consultants” and “yes people” agreeing with the music consultant telling him how to make the Beatles albums better. But the ideas in Yesterday never get past a shallow reference or two. More frustratingly, Richard Curtis seems to not really care to answer any of them, and introduce more other strange occurrences with large global implications that he uses as plot devices for the story he’s trying to tell.
The feeling Richard Curtis generates in all of his fans when they see a great movie of his is “Awww”, with a variance on how many W’s are added depending on how romantic or cute the story is. Yesterday is an excuse for Richard Curtis to get a big budget to tell a story about Jack and Ellie accepting their feelings for one another and realizing they belong together. The audience has to want that to happen though. Himesh Patel is bringing The Beatles to the world and one-upping Ed Sheeran, so he’s got the audience’s heart already. The thing is, I find Lily James a winning presence in the movies she does, but man does she pick really poorly written characters. Early on she’s fun enough, getting an amusing bit about how funny Jack’s injuries are after the blackout. But after that, she’s written prissy and needy, ultimatuming Jack on choosing his music career or her, which she pushed him towards in the first place. It’s telling that the best lines in the movie come from Joel Fry playing Jack’s roadie, and a surprise cameo. Poor showing from Richard Curtis, the guy who gave us all time romantic moments like this or this.
I fear Richard Curtis has been losing his golden touch since Love Actually. Can we get one of Danny Boyle’s writing collaborators to give Yesterday a shot? This movie only gets through a tasting of Beatles music, and I doubt most people would say “Another Beatles movie? Not interested.” In the words of Hey Jude, “Take a sad song and make it better.” I’m sorry, it’s now “Hey Dude” in 2019, obviously.