All you need is The Beatles (almost)

I want to be as positive as I can about Richard Curtis's newest film Yesterday. Together with About Time, it marks his return to the genre he does best - the heartwarming rom-com - after the terrible blip of The Boat That Rocked and that awful "No Pressure" commercial. It's also pretty cute that Danny Boyle, a director I associate primarily with grim and gritty fare like Trainspotting and its sequel - films which, alluring cast choices notwithstanding, I've not been able to bring myself to watch - agreed to direct something as lighthearted as Yesterday and stood the course. No "creative differences" here. (Also, I assume it's thanks to Boyle that we get an uncredited cameo from Robert Carlyle, albeit covered in prosthetics. Squee!) Finally, the film has a prominent Beatles theme, and I'm a huge fan of the fab four.

So when I say that I had problems with both the romance and the comedy parts of this rom-com, I know that sounds harsh, but I did enjoy it, honest. Neither Yesterday nor About Time reaches the heights of Four Weddings and A Funeral and Notting Hill (rom-com perfection) or Love Actually (a bit more flawed, but still very, very good). However, they are pleasant to watch, and I appreciate their underlying sweetness. Curtis, in my view, is at his best when he doesn't shy away from sentiment. I'll keep wishing and hoping (to quote a non-Beatles song) that he'll come up with another rom-com masterpiece, and if he doesn't, films in the style of Yesterday will do just fine.

The premise of the film is that its hero, Jack Malik (Himesh Patel), a failing musician, is just about to give up his music career when the whole world has a power shortage at exactly the same time and he's run over by a bus. He survives, but when he wakes up he finds that only he remembers The Beatles and their songs. The film isn't really interested in what exactly happened during that power shortage. It's less a sci-fi conundrum, more of a plot convenience so as to be able to set up the main story. There's also a running joke about random other phenomena who are unknown in this new reality. Fair enough: geek as I am, I still realise that a Beatles-themed rom-com is hardly the time or place to get into parallel universes and alternate realities. So, we just take it as read that Jack knows about The Beatles and everyone else (almost ) doesn't.

Jack is unable to resist passing off The Beatles' work as his own, and in time he achieves huge success. However, he feels dreadfully guilty. What's more, his new career takes him away from sweet schoolteacher Ellie (Lily James), his friend and (somewhat implausibly) manager during the lean years, whom he has just realised that he loves.

Yes, it's that old chestnut. The main problems with this film has to do with the story. First, the hero is a real whinger. Patel sings well - which is important - but struggles to make a convincing romantic lead, and no wonder. Even Hugh Grant in his heyday would have had his work cut out trying to make the glum Jack, who's miserable when he's a failure and miserable when he's a success, appealing. When Ellie, in good old Curtis-heroine fashion, takes the first step and confesses her love, Jack freezes instead of responding - not once, but twice. What's the poor girl to think except that he's just not that into her?

Second, the "fame and fortune versus true love" setup is not only a cliché, it's a very irritating one. It always bugs me when protagonists are called upon to sacrifice worldly pleasures like money, fame or power for the sake of their loved ones. Because why would their loved ones demand that of them? What kind of bastards are they, that they can't be happy when someone near to them hits the big time? An image which has stayed with me as an illustration of this kind of storyline is from a Barbara Taylor Bradford adaptation: the successful heroine's husband is lounging by the swimming pool while complaining via phone to her that he never sees her. Well, how do you think she pays for that pool, you jerk? Ellie gives mixed signals regarding her feelings about Jack's fame - she claims that she's thrilled for him, but at the same time asks him to stay with her when he has important meetings to attend, as a sort of evidence that he does care for her. I suspect his success isn't really the issue here, and that had he simply said "I love you and I want you to be by my side" at the right time, she could have got used to a life in luxury in California fairly easily.

For these reasons, the Jack-Ellie romance didn't grip me, and as for the comedy, I could have done with more of Curtis's trademark wit. The dialogue doesn't dazzle in, say, Notting Hill fashion (and speaking of Notting Hill, Anna Scott got to keep her movie career and get her man - only sayin'). Many of the funny lines go to Jack's American manager, who's blunt and unapologetically greedy, but her schtick gets old after a while, and when we see the last pop-eyed freeze-frame of her we realise how one-dimensional the character was all along.

What does work, and saves the film, is the admiration and affection it shows for The Beatles. Not only do we get to hear a great number of their songs, as rendered very creditably by Patel, Jack is hailed as "the greatest songwriter of all time" on the basis of their output. Curtis is never one for half-measures: just like Vincent van Gogh according to the Curtis-scripted Doctor Who episode "Vincent and the Doctor" was the best painter ever, so The Beatles, in his view, is obviously the best band ever. Reviewers have speculated that the film would have been more interesting if Jack had failed to make the Beatles songs popular in the modern age; in my opinion, they're missing the point. By having Jack's audiences being wild about Beatles songs, Curtis not only tips his hat to the band and its enduring appeal, he shows a touching faith in the taste of the masses. Like all his rom-coms (I'm not counting Boat) and "Vincent and the Doctor", Curtis's latest film is life-affirming.

Patel is at his most convincing too as a Beatles fan. I can partly make peace with Jack's misery because he clearly hates stealing from John, Paul, George and Ringo, although in his reality they're unaware of it. One of the best scenes in the film is when he meets the two other people in the world who remember The Beatles, and things unfold in another way than he feared.

Seeing as how he managed to coax Paul McCartney into singing "Hey Jude" at the 2012 Olympics inauguration ceremony, I expect Boyle shares Curtis's enthusiasm. Ultimately, you could say, they're just two fanboys, standing in front of a band, asking it to love them.