Film

Taymor (Broadway’s The Lion King, the films Titus and Frida) is an artist of audacious daring and remarkable self-confidence. So when we heard that Taymor’s new film was a musical in which Beatles songs would tie together a love story set in the 1960s, we were nervous, but hopeful. Unfortunately, Across the Universe never transcends the fundamental problems inherent in the concept. No matter how remarkable Taymor’s staging ideas are (and some of them are just great), when the actors burst out in familiar Beatles songs, the movie feels like a giant re-creation of those Gap ads with regular people singing “Mellow Yellow” and “Love Train.”

The love story on which the musical numbers hang is strictly the stuff of a mediocre TV miniseries about “the tumultuous ’60s”: Liverpudlian Jude (Sturgess) comes to America, falls in with a bohemian crowd and woos Lucy (Wood), a girl who goes from sweet naïveté to political activism. Meanwhile, their friends experience the usual late-’60s stuff: Max (Anderson) goes to war; JoJo (Luther) and Sadie (Fuchs) get famous in the rock world while their love falls apart.

Some of the pieces are terrific; “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” becomes an amazing number involving Vietnam vets in a hospital ward, and “I’ve Just Seen a Face” is wonderfully choreographed as an explosion of joy in a bowling alley. But it’s impossible to get past the familiarity of these songs, which makes all the narrative trappings seem like an excuse for a valentine to Lennon and McCartney. We love them, too, but we’ll reserve our sing-alongs for the shower.