![]() Oh, and some weirdo on the trip who thinks he's one of the couriers expresses his romantic interest in Ringo's aunt. In between the aforementioned music videos they stop at a military base where a drill sergeant barks unintelligible instructions at them, engage in a chaotic multi-vehicle race around a track, cram into a tiny tent to watch a video, and finally the men go to see a burlesque show. Problem was they couldn't really come up with any compelling story ideas along the way. It would've been nice to ring down that curtain with a bang instead of a whimper, but you take what you can get.įor some reason the band got the bright idea to more or less improvise an hour-long TV special by collecting a bunch of actors and friends and going on a bus trip that was supposed to come across like an adventure of sorts. Plus this movie was essentially the final creative output from their psychedelic period. So any film that transports me to that time is almost guaranteed to be, at the very least, fascinating to me. The Beatles' seven years of active notoriety must've been a very exciting time to live through, as well as the massive cultural and societal shifts that took place in conjunction. It's one of those eras I wish I could go back and experience for a while. So regardless of its myriad of shortcomings, Magical Mystery Tour definitely has no dearth of intruiging things to look at. The Aunt Jessie nightmare sequence for example includes an unnerving shot of a little person snapping photos from a swinging cage apparatus, a shot that would've been right at home in a David Lynch film. On top of the videos, there are some interesting little touches scattered throughout. "Your Mother Should Know" is a fun little ballroom act sequence. "Blue Jay Way" is gloomy and atmospheric like the song that inspired it. "I Am the Walrus" is a super bizarre, trippy video that Paul McCartney himself later cited as the one indisputable positive to come out of this film. ![]() Strangelove but with color filter effects (Did Stanley Kubrick lift that idea for similar shots in the 2001 "stargate sequence" or vice-versa?). "Flying" largely consists of discarded landscape shots from Dr. Paul's "A Fool on the Hill" was shot in the mountains of France and boasts some beautiful natural scenery. To that end, each music video is pretty cool visually. "Strawberry Fields," "Penny Lane," "All You Need Is Love." Imagine how much better it would've been if it were built around the second side of the MMT album though. But this movie is essentially strung together on a clothesline of Beatles music videos, so that aspect has to be considered its strongest feature. Granted, the songs written specifically for this film, "I Am the Walrus" excluded, are probably not on anyone's Beatles top ten list. A Hard Day's Night this ain't.Īny movie whose soundtrack is comprised of Beatles music automatically scores a few points with me (as it should with everyone). But man, is this thing a clusterfuck if you go into it expecting an actual movie.īut enough introductions, let's take a look at the pluses and minuses of Magical Mystery Tour. And despite being a disorganized mess, parts of it have an offbeat charm to them. In 1080p this film absolutely gains something back from a visual standpoint, so there's that at least. Still to this day part of my brain has a weird appreciation for this flop, and when I discovered a cheap Blu-Ray restoration on Ebay I had to bite. And because it was a Beatles endeavor I'd convinced myself it was quality entertainment, knowing deep down it was a major misfire from a band I'd held up as infallible. I became a hardcore Beatles fan around age ten and sought out all their music and films, and in 1986 my parents bought me a low-grade VHS copy of this movie that looked like absolute cow shit. It was horribly received upon its release (not helped by the fact that the BBC channel on which it originally aired didn't have color capability at the time), but has somewhat gained in popularity since (probably because The Beatles were involved) and currently enjoys a very generous 62% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes (Disney probably paid them to put that there, amirite?). The Beatles attempted to conjure a plot out of thin air but the resulting film is more a collection of little episodes and sketches than it is a proper story. Inspired by mid-60s cross-country bus trips organized by author Ken Kesey, and mostly Paul McCartney's brainchild (though he later said he wasn't sure he wanted to take the full blame for it), Magical Mystery Tour tells the story (for lack of a better word) of the band and a group of their friends taking a bus excursion across the English countryside, interspersed with music videos of the band's latest songs (featured on the album of the same name).
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