Saw A Hard Day's Night (thanks, Chris!) It was odd. Basically, this is the like a movie where the members of One Direction or Justin Bieber or something pretend to film their real lives and sing songs and crack scripted jokes and fool around. Story-wise, this film is complete fluff because everyone involved knows that the demographic is teenagers who are literally only paying to see their pop-star idols appear on screen. So of course it didn't matter what they did and so they did what they wanted. The result is an interesting, meandering, shaggy-dog look at 60s London. We're not fetishizing the Mods and we're not pretending that psychedelia and hippies were around yet. We're just giggling and horsing around and even, for one beautiful little interlude, wandering around with Ringo, the humblest of all of the Beatles.
There's also a hilarious grandfather who looks like H P Lovecraft and speaks in an Irish sneer. The grandfather, being played by an actual actor, is hilarious. At one point he talks Ringo into "parading" by which he means sort of strutting about the streets. He bares his rat-like teeth and has the curiously blank but mobile face of a silent-film star. He's great.
The Beatles themselves do an alright job. Apparently this is the birth of their public personas and character types (which would live on in cartoons of various quality) and if you're a fan, apparently much in the film is quite a treat. They're not actors however and, entertaining and unpolished as they are, they're a bit too fake at times. That said, the film is best when it's not trying to sell The Beatles brand and is just fooling and futzing about. A pleasant, meander-y little film.
I love hard days night. It is obviously a cross between marketing and merch, but it's so upbeat and silly.
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