I’d seen the trailer for this movie enough that I had a pretty good idea what it was about. I also knew that I should see the movie soon, because the repeated viewings of the trailer before other movies was souring me on it before I’d even seen it.

So Mrs. Vendar & I made our way to the wonderful cheap theater to check it out.

In case you’re not familiar with the premise of the movie, it’s a musical set entirely to Beatles music. The music is roughly chronological, so we start with early poppy Beatles and end with the crazy psychedelic stuff (and hear a lot of the really great stuff in between).

As the music moves from pop to drugs to protest (still with the drugs), so the movie’s plot follows. We follow Jude (original name, eh?) in his travels from Liverpool to America, where he meets Lucy (natch), (dear) Prudence, and Max (huh?). The world is changing, war is a-brewin’, and innocent high schoolers are introduced to new people and ideas and sexy English accents.

The story isn’t much to write home about. It has enough clichés to last for a couple movies, and you likely won’t be surprised by any turns the plot takes. But the story is meant, I think, to be a broad stroke at capturing the political and social climate at the time, and not to win any screenwriting Oscars. As I was not around in the 60s, I can’t really speak to how accurately or effectively that capturing actually happens.

But what about the music? There are a ton of songs, some that were new to me, and a whole lot of very imaginative visuals. Some of the musical sequences are a quite weird… but then again, so were a lot of the Beatles’ songs.

None of the songs are original recordings, of course, and the cast tackles them with varying degrees of effectiveness. Jude (Jim Sturgess) looks eerily like Paul McCartney, but doesn’t quite sing like any of the Four. He’s good, but something about his voice makes the music sound a bit too whiny at points.

When it comes down to it, though, it’s a pretty big task to make new versions of legendary music work. Joaquin Phoenix managed in Walk The Line by sounding exactly like Johnny Cash. The cast here succeeds by working the music into the storyline (or, I suppose, molding the storyline to the music—what fortune that a girl name Prudence is depressed, and needs to be encouraged to “come out to play”). I particularly liked Sadie and Jo-Jo’s duets onstage—the interpretation worked really well.

So is it worth seeing? If you like the Beatles, definitely. If you like imaginative movies that use interesting visuals and choreography, definitely. If you want a clever storyline and tight scriptwriting, you could still go and see if the music makes up for it.

(Oh, and if you’re interested in seeing Bono, Eddie Izzard, or Joe Cocker take a stab at the Beatles, it’s worth the $3.50 to see it.)