Across the Universe

This is a musical. Therefore, it's not good. People sing Beatles songs for no reason, including "Why don't we do it in the road?" But this musical is especially bad because it comes packed with surreal dance sequences that are so contrived and ill-advised it's hard to sit through. It's like amateur hour at the "Moulin Rouge!" Imitation Institute, or open-mike night at the Baz Luhrmann Terrible Movie Club. The bowling scene is particularly reprehensible. The "Come Together" sequence was bad as well. That doesn't mean anything to you if you don't see the movie, which you shouldn't. And the part where Max gets drafted and dances with the inductees and the square-jawed soldiers and carries the Statute of Liberty across the fields of Vietnam in his underwear. It's as ridiculous as it sounds.

It plays like a PC, edited-for-TV guided tour through the '60s. On your left, hippies. On your right, The Man. Straight ahead, drugs. Everywhere, Gap models. Wood's boyfriend dies in 'Nam, but because you don't care about her or her boyfriend, the film splices scenes of her grief and the funeral with scenes of black people being shot by white soldiers in the streets. Are you sad yet? But when Wood's brother gets drafted, she and her English beau become activists. And they live with Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, except this movie doesn't have the guts to call them by their real names and pretends like that's not who they are. And then Bono is in it and sings "I am the Walrus" while everyone's on acid, and of course everyone's neon colorful and singing and Bono's got mutton chops. And then Eddie Izzard is a circus ringleader in a Monty Python animation sketch set to "Being for the benefit of Mr. Kite!" Man, this movie sucks.

Ultimately, I will remember this movie as a disappointing turn in the careers of two otherwise promising talents. Evan Rachel Wood was in the terrific "Thirteen" and was one of the few reasons to watch "Down in the Valley." And director Julie Taymor made "Frida," a movie with promise that ended up being something that should have been called "Diego Rivera's Wife," and one of the greater Shakespearean adaptations in recent memory, "Titus." It's not as good as Richard Branagh's "Hamlet," but it's pretty good. "Across the Universe," however, is not good.

And then, to make that even more screwed up, they do a movie where everyone sings Beatles songs, and no one sings "Yellow Submarine." No "Submarine." Denied.