ViewGuide

Created Sep 17, 2016 01:14AM PST • Edited Feb 10, 2020 01:58AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Perfect 5.0

   Beatlemania boggles because of the Beatles and the mania around them, especially from ‘62 to ’66 when they exploded on the world and toured to rabid crowds of hormonal girls. Ron Howard’s fun and insightful doc about those halcyon days doesn’t stint on John, Paul, George & Ringo, or the mania they triggered.

   The footage of girls gone wild is endlessly entertaining, their teenage passion off the hook and out the door. LOLs are frequent as crazed girls clutch their hair, shield their eyes and faint at the wonder of the Fab Four. Has there ever been a better Boy Band than the Beatles? After all, this Boy Band was THE BEATLES!!!

   Jaw dropping commendations come fast and furious, so much that they almost become overwhelming. Consider the list in my Reality commentary. Civil rights, unrivaled popularity, historic genius, wow!

   While The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years has an overlong title, it’s a fun movie that gets people dancing and brings back the Beatles like they’ve never even been away. Baby Boomers like me still can’t get enough. Thank you Apple Corps, Paul, Ringo, Yoko & Olivia. And thank you Ron Howard. You’re Baby Boomer of the year!

4. Acting

   Perfect 5.0

   The Fab Four

   • Paul McCartney appears in new interviews from 2016, plus is his cute self from the Sixties.
   • Ringo Star also appears in recent interviews.
   • George Harrison appears from interviews that appeared in Martin Scorsese’s George Harrison – Living in the Material World and from back in the day.
   • John Lennon appears in interviews from the early Eighties and back in the day. The man had a lightning wit.

   Others

   • Larry Kane – the Miami TV News anchor who toured with them, even though Muhammed Ali was training near his studio. Kane is a wise and mellifluous raconteur from 2016.
   • Whoopi Goldberg didn’t see the Beatles as white, but did get to see them at the legendary Shea Stadium concert.
   • Elvis Costello is perhaps the greatest Beatles fan ever. His grandmother is a Liverpudlian. Here’s his annotated Top 100 Beatles songs at Rolling Stone.
   • Eddie Izzard talks about what great comedians they were.
   • Sigourney Weaver describes her hormonal happiness seeing them at the Hollywood Bowl.
   • Richard Lester directed A Hard Day’s Night, the greatest pop-art movie ever, plus Help.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

7. Female Costars Perfect 5.0

8. Male Costars Perfect 5.0

10. Film

    Perfect 5.0

    Ron Howard had the help and support of Paul McCartney, Ringo Star, Yoko Ono, Olivia Harrison and Apple Corps itself. He done himself proud.

    Pity that The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years is only in theaters for a week at most. Hulu has it from here. Bully for them.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

12. Play Perfect 5.0

13. Music Perfect 5.0

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Tame 1.2

17. Sex Innocent 1.5

18. Violence Gentle 1.0

19. Rudeness Polite 1.0

21. Reality

    Natural 1.0

    The Beatles were a phenomenon that could only happen once, a new synthesis of world music, mass media, electric guitars and the flowering of relatively affluent teen culture, all popularized by what was effectively the world’s first supergroup, only they would have to break-up to prove their individual superstardom.

    Consider the following takeaways from Ron Howard’s doc.

    • The Beatles single handedly caused the integration of the Gator Bowl in ’64, triggering all the other major stadiums across the South to integrate.
    • They had the top 5 Billboard hit songs at one time, the only act ever to do that. The week of April 4, 1964 saw Can’t Buy Me Love as Billboard’s #1, Twist and Shout at #2, She Loves You at #3, I Want to Hold Your Hand & Please Please Me at 4 & 5. Yep, that’ll get her done.
    • Help was an actual cry for help from John. “When I was younger, so much younger than today, I never needed anybody’s help in anyway.” Brilliance in lyrics to go along with a brilliantly constructed tune.
    • Their great songs number more than a hundred, an oeuvre that ranks with the greatest composers of all time, and that’s just for the music. Mozart and Schubert wrote more melodies, sure, but the Beatles were also among the greatest lyricists on top of being the greatest tunesmiths. The Beatles are therefore a once per century phenomena, at the least. Plus they made thousands of girls shriek every time they bopped their mop tops and piped out a WOO!
    • George was a wee lad of 17 when he joined the Beatles in the naughty city of Hamburg, where they’d often play strip clubs for 8 hour gigs. “It’s been a hard day’s night” said Ringo after one, in what John called a Ringoism.
    • They got hauled out of Candlestick Park sliding around on the floor in the back of an armored truck. They never played a paying audience again, and who could blame them.
    • Finally off the road, they made Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a pseudonym that allowed them to escape Beatlemania. Sgt. Pepper’s became what many consider the greatest album of all time. Perhaps, though I award that title to Revolver, just as others award it to Rubber Soul or The White Album. Such was the fecundity of the greatest band in history.

    It started simple, per Paul McCartney. By ‘66 it wasn’t simple at all. It was heavy.

22. Circumstantial Natural 1.0

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0