One thing you can never accuse Julie Taymor of is playing it safe. The Tony-award winner for Broadway’s The Lion King returns to the film director’s chair with the Beatles-inspired musical Across the Universe. An ambitious endeavor that, for Taymor, is clearly a no-win situation.

Fans of the Fab Four will certainly balk at the sometimes absurdly wooden, literal interpretations of some of the greatest music ever created. Non-fans will not be won over by the inconsistent musical numbers, bizarre sequences that resemble bad trips and inside references to Beatle trivia. Full of flashy style, color and lighting, Across the Universe is the perfect musical for today’s ADD-generation. What it amounts to is a string of music videos tied together by a rolling-paper thin storyline of boy-meets-girl set against the backdrop of the turbulent ’60s.

A solid performance is turned in by Jim Sturgess as Jude (get it?!), an aspiring artist and Liverpool dockworker who travels to America to find his father. There he meets free-spirit Max (Joe Anderson, also great) and his naïve little sister Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood). Heeding the cultural call to “tune in, turn on, drop out,” Max and Jude take off to New York City where they shack up with an aspiring soul singer named Sadie. Soon they are joined by guitarist Jojo and a girl named Prudence and… well—you get the picture. (Did I mention that Max also has a silver hammer? OK, enough already.) When Lucy’s boyfriend is killed in Vietnam, she joins Max in New York City and, after falling in love with Jude, finds her calling in social awareness and political activism. Along the way, Joe Cocker (belting a killer version of “Come Together”) and Bono, as the guru-like shaman Dr. Robert, make noteworthy appearances.

Quickly, the summer of love proves to be a mirage as Max is drafted into the Army and is shipped off to the battlefields of Nam. Racial tensions intensify, political turmoil plagues the streets and drug use is rampant. Lucy grows frustrated with Jude’s artistic indifference to idealistic social causes—he’s too busy drawing apples and strawberries. She scolds him “there’s a revolution going on!”

Therein lies the biggest problem of Across the Universe. The wink-wink references to Beatles minutiae actually detract from the overall impact of the film. The seriousness of the underlying social issues we are asked to feel passionate about are reduced to backdrop scenery for the latest song sequence. A powerful performance of “Let It Be” introduces the atrocity of racial prejudice. The problem is never addressed again until the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.—which cues “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” Max’s induction into the military provides the perfect set-up for Uncle Sam to sing “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” complete with a band of new recruits carrying the Statue of Liberty. And so it goes.

Continue: 1 2