I would consider myself as big a Beatles fan as the next person, so I guess I wasn't prepared for what this documentary turned out to be. I wasn't expecting a rehash of Beatles history because there's plenty enough of that in both recorded and written form, and even the brief eleven minute recap offered at the beginning of Part One here didn't seem all that necessary. What we have in this two and a half hour opener to the three part series is a bird's eye view of the Fab Four in the process of creating an album on demand with only fourteen days to come up with an equal number of songs, along with a proposed 'one last time' live concert for their legion of fans.
I can understand how die-hard Beatles fans would find this a gripping experience, but my own reaction was one of finding it somewhat of a chore to sit through. Without their celebrity as world renowned pop music stars, this is no more than watching four musicians at work coming up with lyrics and music while under the gun to get the project done. There IS the fascination of finally understanding some of the tension that existed among the group after being together almost thirteen years at this point, much of it disproportionately attributed to the presence of Yoko Ono and even Linda Eastman. It was a little jarring to see and hear Paul McCartney take command of the quartet the way he did, and admonishing his fellow musicians for not contributing. Particularly when George Harrison made frequent suggestions, which then devolved into semantics about the way Paul and George were annoying each other. This on top of the references made to the problems among the group over the prior eighteen months.
Not everything here was boring or old hat information. I did get a kick out of Paul's reworking the song 'Get Back' to reflect British politicians' stance on anti-immigration in the late Sixties. It seemed like he was coming up with those clever lyrics off the cuff. What I found rather bizarre, and something I never heard of before, was Michael Lindsay-Hogg's determination to have the Beatles' final live performance filmed in a Libyan coastal town amid ancient ruins! How that would have appealed to Beatles fans I can't imagine. How it would have appealed to the Beatles I can't imagine either.
All of which contributed to what, if we already didn't know the history, would be a shocking cliff hanger ending with George announcing his leaving the band. This after seven days of working together with mixed results, with some of the new songs progressively sounding better and more polished over the course of the collaboration. If anything, I would have to credit director Peter Jackson for the intestinal fortitude of going through fifty six hours of unseen footage and one hundred fifty hours of unheard audio to come up with this documentary. If I found this a bit of a slog to get through, I can only imagine what he must have felt like deciding what to discard for the final product.
I fully expect to get overwhelmingly negged for this review, as it's been my experience that IMDb viewers vote more on whether they liked a project or not, rather than on the substance of a review for that project. That's fine. I can still be a Beatles fan without being enthralled by this documentary. I'll still watch the remaining two segments and be back to comment on those, seeing as how important this chapter was in the life and eventual dissolution of the Fab Four.
I can understand how die-hard Beatles fans would find this a gripping experience, but my own reaction was one of finding it somewhat of a chore to sit through. Without their celebrity as world renowned pop music stars, this is no more than watching four musicians at work coming up with lyrics and music while under the gun to get the project done. There IS the fascination of finally understanding some of the tension that existed among the group after being together almost thirteen years at this point, much of it disproportionately attributed to the presence of Yoko Ono and even Linda Eastman. It was a little jarring to see and hear Paul McCartney take command of the quartet the way he did, and admonishing his fellow musicians for not contributing. Particularly when George Harrison made frequent suggestions, which then devolved into semantics about the way Paul and George were annoying each other. This on top of the references made to the problems among the group over the prior eighteen months.
Not everything here was boring or old hat information. I did get a kick out of Paul's reworking the song 'Get Back' to reflect British politicians' stance on anti-immigration in the late Sixties. It seemed like he was coming up with those clever lyrics off the cuff. What I found rather bizarre, and something I never heard of before, was Michael Lindsay-Hogg's determination to have the Beatles' final live performance filmed in a Libyan coastal town amid ancient ruins! How that would have appealed to Beatles fans I can't imagine. How it would have appealed to the Beatles I can't imagine either.
All of which contributed to what, if we already didn't know the history, would be a shocking cliff hanger ending with George announcing his leaving the band. This after seven days of working together with mixed results, with some of the new songs progressively sounding better and more polished over the course of the collaboration. If anything, I would have to credit director Peter Jackson for the intestinal fortitude of going through fifty six hours of unseen footage and one hundred fifty hours of unheard audio to come up with this documentary. If I found this a bit of a slog to get through, I can only imagine what he must have felt like deciding what to discard for the final product.
I fully expect to get overwhelmingly negged for this review, as it's been my experience that IMDb viewers vote more on whether they liked a project or not, rather than on the substance of a review for that project. That's fine. I can still be a Beatles fan without being enthralled by this documentary. I'll still watch the remaining two segments and be back to comment on those, seeing as how important this chapter was in the life and eventual dissolution of the Fab Four.