Take a cross-section of two dozen or so classic Beatles tunes ("Let It Be!", "Helter Skelter!", "Happiness is a Warm Gun!"), graft it onto a Time-Life Books-condensed version of '60s history, populate it with a "hip" cast of both new and established names (Evan Rachel Wood, Bono, Salma Hayek, Eddie Izzard, etc.), and then run it all through a schmaltzy Broadway blender designed to offend neither the sensibilities of High School Musical- loving tweens or their parents. Directed by Julie Taymor, it's an inspired gambit to synergize the Beatles music with the big screen in a way that hasn't been done since, well, the Fab Four's own classic rock musicals Help! and A Hard Day's Night revolutionized the language of cinema back in the '60s. So the arrival of 'The Beatles: The Movie!', aka, Across the Universe, should come as no surprise. ![]() Like some sort of demented Liverpudian Chia Pet, it seemed as if all you needed to do was just add a little Yellow Submarine-flavored water and voila!, up would sprout a new, officially-licensed Beatles tentacle, from the endless parade of best-of and box-set re-issues to the recent Cirque du Soleil stage re-invention, 'Love.' It was enough to make one wonder of the remaining Beatles' continued professed resistance to "selling out" their back catalogue, as all Paul, Ringo, John (as represented by Yoko Ono) and the late George Harrison seemed to do over the past couple of decades is run a licensing empire. Like any good Product, of course, the capitalization of the Beatles brand hasn't stopped in the intervening years. It was shallow, silly and reeked of desperate nostalgia, but if it proved nothing else, it was that the music of The Beatles has proved so defining to the entire human race that a group of facsimiles had become just as good (or at least as marketable) as the real thing. Millions paid for tickets to see a group of John, Paul, George and Ringo imposters miming to the music of the band, complete with wired-on mop-tops and cheesy theatrical staging. For the Beatles, that moment probably came with Beatlemania!, the inexplicably popular stage phenomenon of the early '80s. ![]() There comes a moment in the life span of every classic band when it's no longer about the Music, but the Commodity.
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