Across the Universe is a musical told through Beatles songs in a similar way that Mamma Mia is told through ABBA songs. First of all, I love the Beatles because it brings back fond memories of my childhood. My dad worked weekdays and my mom worked weekends back then, so my dad would always bring us to garage sales, flea markets, baseball games, and atari clubs and he would always play his favorite songs including the Beatles, Four Seasons, Eagles, Blood Sweat & Tears, The Righteous Brothers, Simon & Garfunkel, etc...So you could say I grew up more with this music than music of the 80's 90's.
So, you may ask, how do the Beatles covers in this movie stand up to the original? I would say that they are pretty damn good. I found myself singing along to the songs while I watched the movie and I even purchased the 31 song soundtrack on iTunes (there are three different versions but this actually has all the songs). The only song I didn't really like was Eddie Izzard singing "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite," although it was more fun to watch, lol.
As for the actual movie, it's a love story set in the 1960's surrounding the anti-war protests of the Vietnam War, and it is chock full of Beatles references. However, I'm not so sure that it is pieced well enough together with the songs. At some points it was rather slow, and sometimes I was left wondering what exactly was going on. The musical numbers were excellent and artistic, ranging from heart warming and exciting, to just plain weird, but everything else in between was kinda...meh. Honestly, I think the movie is best taken as a good collection of musical numbers rather than a poorly strung together story.
I still recommend it to Beatles fans for the excellent musical numbers. You could always just fast forward through the boring talky parts. :P
