“Yesterday” celebrates its free TV premiere
Life without the Beatles is possible – but pointless
British superstar Ed Sheeran (r.) Plays himself in “Yesterday” – and takes aim at himself.
© © Jonathan Prime/Universal Pictures
The Beatles are forgotten, only one man can remember them. The plot of “Yesterday” is fake but charming.
“Life without a pug is possible – but pointless,” once thought comedy legend Loriot (1923-2011). Danny Boyle (65) saw it similarly in his film “Yesterday”, which will be shown on free TV on March 6th on RTL (8:15 p.m.) for the first time, with regard to particularly musical beetles. What would a world be like without the most famous band of all time, The Beatles? His comedy gets to the bottom of this mind game in an imaginative and charming way – and that despite the far-fetched story up to the last second.
Fall on the mushroom head
Jack Malik (Himesh Patel, 31) is a talented musician. Unfortunately, apart from his best friend/manager Ellie (Lily James, 32), no one seems to realize this, and so he wanders through pedestrian zones and pubs more and more disillusioned. When he gets the chance to perform at a festival, but only plays on a remote mini stage in front of three children and just as many of his buddies, his decision is made: Much to Ellie’s horror, he wants to give up his guitar and his musical ambitions hang. But everything else comes.
One night while he’s out on his bike, the whole world witnesses a sudden, mysterious power outage. Jack’s losing streak continues and just as the blackout reaches the small British port town of Lowestoft, where he lives, he is hit by a bus. While he only lost two teeth in the incident, the entire world population is losing something far more important – the memory of The Beatles and all their hits. Jack initially still believes that his friends are making a bad joke when none of them want to know the song “Yesterday”, but after a short Google search he quickly realizes that no one else knows John, Paul, George and Ringo anymore. His chance to start a world career with the hits of the Beatles…
All beginnings are difficult
The synopsis already makes it abundantly clear that right at the beginning the viewer is asked to accept the film’s outrageous premise – without asking too many of the obvious questions. The plot of “Yesterday” seems similarly constructed to that of Ricky Gervais’ (60) film “Lügen macht erventisch” (2009), in which, apart from the main character Mark (Gervais), nobody is able to tell untruths. But there is one big difference.
In contrast to the 2009 comedy, Boyle and screenwriter Richard Curtis (65) manage to carry the idea for over two hours and save it to the finish with “Yesterday”. Which of course also has to do with their musical sleight of hand, having devised a plot that makes it possible to really spoil all the Beatles’ hits. Hobby mushroom heads don’t really care and so they can look forward to an iconic song time and time again, which songwriter genius Jack just “thought up”. Especially since it also deals with an interesting question that is viewed critically by today’s pop industry…
Exaggerated statement
Would the modern music machine even allow the Beatles to achieve the nimbus that has characterized them to this day? After his breakthrough, Jack has to find out early on that a career in the music business these days comes with dozens of image consultants, stylists, advertising deals and make-believe worlds. Nobody cares about a record with the cryptic name “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” – too many characters for Twitter. And instead of “Hey Jude” the song title “Hey Dude” would be much better.
In the person of Jack’s new manager Mandi (Kate McKinnon, 38), the criticism of today’s drawing board fame is particularly clear, almost caricatured. Of course, she only sees the dollar signs on her latest donkey and would sell her own grandmother for a masala chai latte. It would have done a little less to the twelve, but it sheds an interesting light on a modern superstar: Ed Sheeran (31).
Charming and self-deprecating
He plays himself in “Yesterday”, maybe not Oscar-worthy, but extremely charming and self-ironic. Like Jack, he is also managed by Raffzahn Mandi, and he has a hit as a cell phone ringtone. Little latently, Sheeran also seems to be looking forward to a long-gone time with “Yesterday”, in which a musician could simply be a musician – and not a brand that was prompted by thousands of directions with the best marketing strategy.
Speaking of charming: That can be said about the entire film. This is due to what is perhaps the funniest Google research of all time and the fact that, with the exception of the aforementioned Mandi, the main and secondary characters all mean no harm. Especially the lovable characters of Himesh Patel and Lily James have a great chemistry with each other and grow on you. There are also genre clichés like the constant “just missing each other” or “being disturbed at the last second”.
Conclusion:
The music of the Fab Four is still on permanent rotation at home? Then into the Chelsea boots, cropped the mushroom head and turn on “Yesterday”. The film is a must for fans of the Beatles, but for everyone else it is a charming romantic comedy with fabulous music. Anyone who gets involved in the film’s supernatural plot can look forward to two hours of feel-good entertainment. Catchy tune guaranteed at the end: “Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on, bra, la-la, how the life goes on!”