Go Buy the Love Soundtrack

Away from Cinemark in Hadley, MA, I start to realize how much the general public usually pays for mainstream movies. On a recent adventure to the ever-beautiful suburban haven of The Avenue @ White Marsh, (picture the Lowell, MA outlets on steroids), I was subjected to a $9.50 tag for one of the more disappointing ventures to the theater this year. Let's face it, I shouldn't embrace the blissful ignorance of a $6.50 ticket in Hadley, but the extra three bucks really drove home the point of why I haven't been spending money on movies every weekend at school.

But what made the price tag that much harder to bear? The viscous glob of idealized counterculture mush that is the latest tribute to The Beatles: Across the Universe.

It's fair to say that the 60s and 70s have been idealized and chronicled in many a movie since the actual decade, that many of us have longed once or twice to live the free-love image, to protest, to go to Woodstock (and forget to go to Altamont), to trip balls with Hunter Thompson, etc. Whatever you wished you could've done, there's no denying that we don't get the full story about living with almost no money for gas, food, and shelter. This is the first, and perhaps greatest plot-related fault, of Across the Universe.

It wasn't that fucking easy. What makes the movie so painfully superficial is that it exists in the same world as the 1950s Baltimore that Hairspray so eagerly embraces. We are presented with a problem, we are fed one obvious solution, we watch the main character proceed. There is nothing trying about that characters in Across the Universe, there is always a happy ending, and you see it coming from the opening scene.

So maybe you're saying to yourself, I can handle a light fluffy flick, how bad can it be? I think my main complaint walking out of the theater was the lack of creativity. First of all, character names. We meet Jude in Liverpool (how coincidental), he falls in love with Lucy, and together with Lucy's brother engage in a number of activities such as: Convincing Prudence (who has locker herself in the closet because she is embarrassed about being gay) to "come out and play," and hopping on Dr. Robert's bus to see Mr. Kite's circus (which does not at any point happen on trampolines).

Someone, somewhere, googled the lyrics to their favorite Beatles cuts and said, fuck it, let's write some junky scenes and incorporate subjects from the song directly as visuals. I mean come on, Jude sings strawberry fields as he angrily throws strawberries at a canvas. These guys must be geniuses.

I can remember first seeing previews for this movie last spring and anticipating some weird comment on counterculture and a great visual spectacle. I had no idea that it would merely be a raping of a few Beatles favorites (they really don't need so many dramatic pauses or extra notes) with a loved story stuffed in between them; it almost doesn't matter when and where it happens since the goal isn't unique at all.

Perhaps Hollywood was looking for a way to cash in on the creative breakthrough of Cirque de Soleil's spectacle Love, but if you're in search of a new way to listen to the Beatles, iTunes and every record store you can think of has a copy of the soundtrack.