Strawberries appeal forever?: Jim Sturgess contemplates whether repackaged Beatles tunes will strike a chord with a younger audience.

Hey Dudes, You Made It Bad

Across the Universe contrives Beatles songs to tell a pointless tale.

by Sean Burns

Breathtakingly, humorlessly earnest and so “far out” it deserves its own zip code, Julie Taymor’s epic, astonishingly misbegotten ode to every ’60s cliche imaginable is a musical about attractively blank characters with amusing names, all of whom can express their deepest, innermost feelings only by belting out Beatles songs.

There are 33 numbers in all, spread out over two hours and change, and if you can’t imagine a situation during which you’re actually dreading hearing some of the greatest, most dexterous and idiosyncratic songwriting in the history of popular music, Across the Universe will cure you of that notion real fast.

Alas, it’s not even an original idea. The little-seen 1976 film All This and World War II juxtaposed insane Beatles covers by the likes of Helen Reddy and Rod Stewart with vintage newsreel WWII footage in an attempt to prove … what, exactly? And dare I even mention Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the 1978 camp classic with Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees stumbling their way through obnoxiously literal representations of abstract Fab Four lyrics?

Memo from an aging Gen-Xer to baby boomers everywhere: We get it, and we’re bored. Everybody likes the Beatles, and we all understand these tunes are timeless. We also get that yours was the only generation that really mattered, because you took to the streets and protested the war for a little while before most of you grew up to become insufferable yuppies who now run entertainment divisions of massive multimedia conglomerates dedicated to regurgitating the 1960s in every way possible—from reissued CD collections to unconvincing NBC miniseries—branding all your rock songs in advertising campaigns, and finally crafting gargantuan, fossilized spectacles like Across the Universe, which attempts to sell a curiously anachronistic version of your tie-dyed mythology to those Moulin Rouge-y, text-messaging kids today.

Jim Sturgess stars as Jude (naturally), a free-spirited working-stiff lad from Liverpool who tries his chances at a better life in the U.S.A., only to find himself entangled with Evan Rachel Wood’s Lucy (of course), a teenage war widow who says she wants a revolution. There’s also her brother Maxwell (Joe Anderson), who sadly enough never brandishes a silver hammer. But that doesn’t stop the cast from including a sexy Sadie; one dear lesbian cheerleader named Prudence (who’s introduced singing a down-tempo “I Want to Hold Your Hand” to another gal on the squad) and a token black guy called JoJo, who thought he was a loner, but he knew it wouldn’t last. I can only assume Eleanor Rigby was otherwise occupied.

One watches Across the Universe in a state of heightened anticipation, wondering how far backward Julie Taymor and screenwriters Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais are willing to bend in order to make the movie fit the lyrics you already know. When Dear Prudence smuggles herself into an apartment through the bathroom window, we all lean forward in our seats, waiting for a payoff that only sort of arrives.

What’s most revealing is that despite more than 130 minutes of singing, hand-wringing and pontificating, none of the so-called characters are forced to make any actual decisions or come even remotely close to sacrificing anything before the whole thing just kind of works itself out. (“All You Need Is Love,” they keep telling me.)

Meanwhile, the otherwise brilliant T-Bone Burnett produced the anachronistically bottom-heavy, emo renditions of these classic tunes, and even the ’60s fashions are tempered by a modern Brooklyn bed-head aesthetic. It’s the kind of “period piece” that’ll look dated three years from now.

Taymor indulges her theater background, still not understanding that movies aren’t performance pieces. There are all sorts of Blue Meanie puppets, drastic lighting changes and hilariously overstated symbolism. I was able to keep it together until around when the Uncle Sam posters at the draft board turned into cartoons and started singing, “I want you … I want you so bad … ” and then a whole bunch of GIs are glimpsed slogging through the swamps of Vietnam in their underwear, carrying the Statue of Liberty on their shoulders and filling out the chorus screaming: “She’s so heavy!”

You can’t make this shit up.

Where are Frampton and the Bee Gees when you need them?