Movie Reviews - Yesterday

Director: Danny Boyle
Genre: Drama/ Comedy/ Music
Runtime: 116 minutes
Year: 2019
Starring: Himesh Patel, Lily James, Sophia Di Martino, Ellise Chappell, Meera Syal, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Kate McKinnon, Alexander Arnold, Harry Mitchell, Ed Sheeran, Vincent Franklin, Joel Fry

Description: A struggling musician (Hamish Patel) realizes he’s the only person on Earth who can remember The Beatles after waking up in an alternate timeline where they never existed.

Review: Picture this: you are a struggling musician and one day you find out that the world has forgotten about the Beatles, except for you. What do you do? Well, Jack uses the songs to become a famous artist himself. It sounds like a far-fetched premise, but it’s a fun-filled heartwarming and feel-good comedy.
Singer-songwriter Jack Malik has been struggling as a musician for years. He drags himself from bar to bar, with his best friend slash manager Ellie, where nobody really listens to him. He decides to stop, but then something magical happens. During a worldwide power out, Jack gets hit by a car and wakes up in a hospital. And it seems that the whole world had forgotten about The Beatles. They never existed and Jack is the only one that still remembers.
When Jack plays “Yesterday”, his friends are emotional and tell him it’s a beautiful song. Since when does he wrote songs like this? After some Google searches, he realizes that all the songs are up for grabs and he decides to sing them as they are his own.
Richard Curtis, who was also a part of “Love Actually”, “Notting Hill” and “Four Weddings and a Funeral”, is responsible for the screenplay. It’s filled with ‘what-if’ jokes. Just like “About Time”, which is also a Curtis film, you have to be fully on board while seeing this film with a pretty absurd story.
I love the premise of this film and I love a great feel-good movie without all the cheesiness and clichés. This is perfect for that. But the film is a bit repetitive at times. The creators of this film are clearly having fun with this film and their genius idea, and it works really well most of the time. Like when Jack meets 70-somewhat Jon Lennon ins the parallel reality. And leading man Himesh Patel, unknown for me, is really charming. Whenever he starts singing the song by The Beatles, you are remember how timeless their songs really are. Even if I’m not the biggest fan.
“Yesterday” is a really good time and a great ode to one of the most successful bands of all-time.

Rating: 3,5/ 5