Yesterday: I Want To Hold Your Hand With This Review
By: Eric “Dirty Dawg” Darsie (@DirtyDawgMES)
If there ever was a movie that was a combination of the Back to the Future trilogy and mashed it up with Rocketman, the Hot Tub Time Machine movie and Bohemian Rhapsody, we’d get Yesterday!
I was hesitant on going to my local theater and putting hard earned money “…working eight days…” to watch a movie based around the Beatles and their music, when, I wasn’t much a fan of their music. I prefer John Mellencamp, I prefer Elton John, I prefer Jimmy Buffett, music that’s more current than that English band.
I listen to Dave Schrader’s Midnight In the Desert and on a recent show, Schrader opened up with a brief review of Yesterday, saying that it had touches of Back To the Future, in regards to having an alternate timeline. Schrader definitely caught my attention with that reference.
I’ve joked around on my wrestling podcast, Wrestling With the Dawg, about having a degree in Philosophy, one of my favorite topics when in college and still today is the Philosophy of Time and time travel.
It doesn’t surprise me growing up watching Christopher Llyod and Michael J. Fox on my television screen. My Mother grew up listening to the Beatles on the radio. Her childhood was smack dab in the years the band was together and grew up and graduated high school years after the band disbanded. When she heard that there was going to be a movie based on the Beatles’ music, she was interested on going out to see the film.
Theories like the Mandela Effect always interest me. The Mandela Effect, thanks to Wikipedia, can be explained by “…psychological phenomenon where a person recalls something that did not happen or that something happened differently from the way it happened.”
Bryan Alvarez, writer of Figure Four Weekly and podcast host over at F4WOnline.com use to do a paranormal podcast called After Dark and on the show, Alvarez used to talk some about the Mandela Effect in regards to the spelling of Berenstein….or the Berenstain Bears. With that, I remember Dave Schrader on Darkness Radio having multiple shows on the Mandela Effect and had callers call in and give their real life examples of that theory.
Let’s leave the philosophy and conspiracies behind us. I really enjoyed the film – I really did. The movie is based around Jack Malik (played by Himesh Patel), having a less-than-stellar music career and about to leave it all behind and getting a “real job.”
After Jack Malik’s last gig, manager and friend Ellie (played by Lily James) dropped Jack off to get to his bike and bike home. For some odd reason the electricity went out all over the world for 12 seconds, which caused Jack to get hit by a bus and bumped him into another reality – a reality that didn’t know the Beatles, Harry Potter, and cigarettes, just to name a few.
Jack Malik, being a huge Beatles fan is surprised when his friends didn’t know who he was talking about when trying to explain the Beatles after his accident and played “Yesterday” on his new guitar that was gifted to him. After his friends were holding their ground on not knowing who Jack was referring to, Jack Googled the Beatles and… they didn’t appear.
So, with that revelation, Jack went out to start playing the Beatles’ catalog off of memory. Loe and behold, after playing a few gigs playing the Beatles’ catalog, singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran, playing himself, took Jack on tour as an opening act on his tour.
Not to spoil the movie (even though it’s out in theaters and there are other reviews out there), I want you, I highly suggest you guys to go out and see the movie in theaters, or watch it via other means when it exits theaters.
The love story that was weaved throughout the movie caught my heart. In the end, Jack met John Lennon (remember, this happened in an alternate time line – and Robert Carlyle was the actor who portrayed Lennon) in a old beach house with his dog and Jack was asking John about his life and his happiness.
John Lennon told Jack, in the crisis of coming clean about who actually wrote his songs, and to tell the love of his life that he loves her. So that’s what Jack did. He masterminded a plan, where in Wembley Stadium in London, after Ed Sheeran played a set, Sheeran introduced Jack on stage to play a few songs and after his setlist, Jack came clean about the Beatles (where everyone in Wembley booed) and announced his love for Ellie.
I highly suggest going out and seeing Yesterday because I was somewhat expecting it to fall in lines to what I’ve heard Bohemian Rhapsody and what Rocketman biopics were. To my surprise, it fell in line with my love for time travel and went hand-in-hand with my Mom’s love for the Beatles. I surely do need Help! after A Hard’s Day Night, go out and see Yesterday before it becomes a fleeting memory!
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