HEFE'S REVIEW OF:
ACROSS THE UNIVERSE (2007)

OPENING THOUGHTS

    I thought this movie sounded interesting, a musical made with songs from The Beatles would have to be good right? I mean The Beatles are awesome, and this is kind of reminded me of Moulin Rouge in the sense that they were using old songs to create something new. I loved Moulin Rouge, so I am sure this movie will have to be great... right?

ACTING

    EVAN RACHEL WOOD is a girl, and her first name is Evan, I don't think I ever thought about that before. That is actually kind of weird, it's like: "Hi, my name is Bill check out my vagina." It doesn't make sense. Anyway if you have ever wondered what it would be like to watch Avril Lavigne sing some Beatles songs that you should watch this movie. While it was a nice change of pace to see her without excessive amounts of eye make-up on, I can't endorse her performance in this film. Oh, you also get to see her nipple in this movie, which was also very uncomfortable. She is extremely pale and flat chested, and the best way to describe what I saw would be to imagine a dry-erase board with a red thumb tack stuck right in the center. That is pretty much exactly what it looked like, and unless you get aroused by going in to stores like Staples, I doubt this will do anything to make you happy.
    JIM STRUGESS was the best person in this movie, this is probably because he was the only one who was actually from England, and as a result he sounded closer to Paul McCartney or John Lennon then any of the other people in the film could. That being said, it still was not as good as the original Beatles music is. But I will say this, he certainly looks like he could be one of the Fab Four. From my understanding women across the universe are now fingering themselves nightly to his image. Did you see how I worked the title into that last sentence about masturbation... totally classy.
    JOE ANDERSON was not terrible either, his rendition of Hey Jude was pretty good, but again, I will take the original songs any day of the week. His character was probably the most fun of the bunch, and he kicked in some much needed energy to the otherwise dreary and sleepy cast.

DIRECTION AND SCRIPT

    JULIE TAYMOR is a terrible director, plain and simple. At first I was thinking oh I kind of like those slow motion shots where action is happening around the central character. But than it kept happening, an I started thinking, man she needs to quit using that shot. To my dismay, she did stop using the shot and started replacing it with ever increasingly ridiculous and over-the-top shots that did nothing but distract from the feeble story. Truly one of the worst directed movies in a long time, although I will say the only exception to this was the I Want You So Bad scene, that was pretty freaking cool., but I think much of the credit for that should go to the costume designer.
    DICK CLEMENT and IAN LA FRENAIS are the ones responsible the most for this movie sucking huge donkey balls. The story and the characters they came up with for this film are paper thin, and the reason is because this movie was written around songs, and you are left trying to piece together a series of great, all be it unrelated songs to make a coherent movie. With Moulin Rouge they were able to create a script first and then use great classic songs to accent the film. Instead the songs were driving the story, and since the songs are unconnected it was nothing but a struggle to connect all of these mini-stories. The result as I said is a shallow story with shallower characters. There are several characters that only exist so as to have the song they are named after appear in the film such as Prudence and Mr. Kite. What a waste, and what a shame.

THE VERDICT

    The only thing this movie did was remind of a few lesser known Beatles songs that I had forgotten about that I will have to download into my music collection. Other than that you have a shitty movie, with mostly shitty people singing versions of the songs that are simply no where near as good as the original. I recommend going out and buying a bunch of Beatles albums and listening to them rather than wasting your time watching this film.
 
 

RATING: D

Disagree with this review? Have a question?
Want to request a movie for Hefe to review?
Tell Him!!
hefe@hollywoodguys.net


If you think these reviews taste good, you should sign up for The Hollywood Tickle! You will get a buffet of fun jammed right in your inbox!


ACTOR LIST~~MOVIE LIST~~DIRECTOR LIST~~SCREENWRITER LIST