The Beatles get reintroduced in Yesterday

by Kathia Woods

What would the world look like if one of the greatest bands ever were wiped off the face of the earth? That’s the premise of the movie Yesterday. The world experiences a global black out in which the entire Beatles catalog has gone, and only one person remembers them, struggling musician Jack Malick. He decides to utilize the accident towards his advantage, and pass of the Beatles songs as his own.

Malik discovers that he’s the only person that remembers the Beatles. This happenstance is the opening he needed to turn his failing career around. Once he starts passing of the songs as his and uploading them on YouTube, he becomes an internet sensation.

The foundation of this movie isn’t the Beatles, contrary to popular opinion. It’s having your dream come true and realizing it's not what you expected. Like so many before him, he’s excited to have an audience finally, but the more his videos receive clicks, the more prominent the demand. Naturally, this requires him to leave behind everyone he loves, including Ellie, his best friend/manager/booking agent. Their relationship is one of the themes of this movies. There are many sections in this film, friendship, success, and self-worth are few Jack Malik grapples while navigating success.

There is going to be two types of audiences for this movie. Beatle fans and fans that are looking to escape monsters or superheroes.

The Beatle fans are going to feel disappointed at the commercialization of these songs. After all, they were written to commemorate love, awareness, or even conflict. The latter is happy to see a movie with a human-interest story without special effects. How to do you weave those two worlds together? First, you can’t take this as a blueprint for the music industry.

Second, you must accept that this generation wasn’t raised on the Beatles like previous generations. There are more Oasis and Radio Head fans. Also, this story is about Jack thinking success was going to solve all his problems; instead, it created more.

I enjoyed Himesh Patel as Jack Malik, he was funny and believable as a struggling artist. Lily James is charming as his love interest. I wish their coming together were written a little more interesting instead, we knew that these two would fall in love.

Kate McKinnon was spot on as Jack’s slick new manager. She makes no qualms about looking at him as a cash cow, not an artist. The most delightful characters in Yesterday however are Rock and Mr./Mrs. Malik.

Rock portrayed by Joel Fry is the worst Road Manager; however, this is what makes him so charming. The guy with the worst time management is now in charge of the hottest artist in the world. The scenes between Fry and Patel are some of the funniest in the film. I also enjoyed that Ed Sheeran was willing to let this film make fun of his persona.

Veteran comedic actors Sanjeev Bhaskar and Meera Syal are hilarious as Jack’s parents. They are so underwhelmed by Jack’s desire to be a musician that even when he plays a classic Beatles song they don’t care.

If you’re looking for accuracy, you will be disappointed in Yesterday, but if you’re willing to invest in Jack Malick this will work for you. After all success doesn’t guarantee happiness. Yesterday is a feel-good movie also it was nice to imagine how this generation would react to John, Paul, Ringo and John.

Diversity- This movie gets a 7 the lead was brit of Indian descent

Scale- this movie receives a 7.