Movie Review: Help!

Help! was The Beatles' second (and last) full-length, live-action, theatrical movie. It was filmed in a variety of locations, such as Salisbury Plain (home of Stonehenge), the Bahamas, Austria, and of course England. Some critics disliked the film:

Leslie Halliwell describes it as an "[e]xhausting attempt to outdo A Hard Day's Night in lunatic frenzy, which goes to show that some talents work best on low budgets. The humour is a frantic cross between Hellzapoppin', The Goons, Goofy, Mr. Magoo and the shade of Monty Python to come. It looks good but becomes too tiresome to entertain."

I actually kind of agree with that last part; during the second half of the movie, I found myself being sucked into the film, eyes glazed over (and not necessarily in a good way). At the same time, I enjoyed the film. It works well as a spy-movie spoof, even with its inappropriate portrayal of supposedly Indian characters (a parody of the Thuggee cult).

According to Wikipedia, "The Beatles did not particularly enjoy the filming of the movie, nor were they pleased with the end product. In 1970, John Lennon said they felt like extras in their own movie." John also admitted that they "were smoking marijuana for breakfast during that period. Nobody could communicate with us, it was all glazed eyes and giggling all the time. In our own world. It's like doing nothing most of the time, but still having to rise at 7 am, so we became bored." 

The guys stated later that the film was shot in a "haze of marijuana". While filming the part about the guys curling, Paul and Ringo ran off in the middle of the scene to smoke a joint behind a hill. :P Ringo said of the incident:

Well, Paul and I ran about seven miles, we ran and ran, just so we could stop and have a joint before we came back. We could have run all the way to Switzerland. If you look at pictures of us you can see a lot of red-eyed shots; they were red from the dope we were smoking. And these were those clean-cut boys!

Despite the shortcomings of the movie, Help! isn't really a bad film. It kept most of the great vibe from A Hard Day's Night and the guys, even if they weren't having much fun and were getting high all the time, actually shine in several scenes. My particular favorite was when they were skiing and messing around in the snow. :)

Overall, a good movie, and fun to watch. I'll post some of my favorite quotes down below, just because. :) See you soon, for today's song.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ringo: What was it that first attracted you to me?
John: Well, you're very polite, aren't you?

John: There's somebody been in this soup.

George, realizing the curling stone is actually a bomb: Hey, it's a thingy! A fiendish thingy!

George: I'm always getting winked at these days. It used to be you, didn't it Paul?

Superintendent: Oh come on now lads, don't be windy, where's that famous pluck?
John: I haven't got any, have you George?
George: Did have.
Paul: I have had.
Ringo: I will have! Lead on!

Ringo: The Fire Brigade once got my head out of some railings.
John: Did you want them to?
Ringo: No, I used to leave it there when I wasn't using it for school. You can see a lot of the world from railings.

Movie Review: A Hard Day's Night

Just finished watching A Hard Day's Night, the motion picture. It was fantastic. Most of it was downright hilarious, with John's bathtub capers, Ringo's last-minute walkabout, Paul's warning that his grandfather is an untrustworthy "mixer", and George's displacement of the fashionable "resident teenager". :P

There were plenty more great moments that I really enjoyed. I particularly liked the conversation between John and a lady who almost recognizes him, saying that he looks "just like him" but neither of them mention Lennon's name. Finally, when she decides he in fact looks nothing like him, John, offended and muttering, walks away in a huff, and pulls his cap down low over his eyes. 

My other favorite John moment was, as I mentioned above, while he was playing with a submarine in the bathtub. He disappears underwater, and when his manager pulls the plug and the water drains away, John appears to have been Raptured away. He comes in a moment later, in a bathrobe, scolding his manager for dilly-dallying. :P

I've said this before (after watching the segment of the video for "If I Fell") but my favorite quote was by George, noting Ringo's obsessiveness when it comes to his instruments: "He's very fussy about his drums, you know. They loom large in his legend." 

During the concert scene, though, with the incessant screaming and sobbing of the fans, I couldn't help but see how tired, sweaty, and almost bored the guys looked from time to time--they were acting and lip-syncing, but it must have gotten old in real life to be constantly hounded. Overall, the movie was well worth watching. It was entertaining, and it gave a somewhat fictionalized glimpse into John, Paul, George, and Ringo's lives as The Beatles. So, if I were a movie critic, I'd give it two thumbs up, five stars, A+, whatever you want to call it. :)