In His Life: The John Lennon Story Review

By: Robert Acosta

Cast:
Phillip McQuillian Phoenix as John Lennon
Blair Brown as Mimi Lennon
Daniel McGowan as Paul McCartney

Plot: The story takes place before The Beatles make it big and specifically takes you through John Lennon's story from beginning to right before The Beatles head to America.

Review: It's rare that I see a movie on TV and have to review it just a couple hours after I see it. Now I warn you, just because i'm about to do something I rarely do, doesn't mean it's going to be a good review for the movie.

For starters, I am a huge fan of The Beatles. I don't exactly know their full history but I have some kind of idea when it comes to how it all came together. Some like to think the gods just put them together and they made great music. Well, close enough.

So in terms of the accuracy of the movie based on the facts they had, I can't comment. Though nothing seems too far-fetched or crazy. I do like the direction they took with the movie, making it specifically before The Beatles go to America, we get to see the story that most people don't know a lot about. We know more about Lennon with Yoko Ono, his peace idealogies and the late Beatles music than we do about The Quarrymen and being in Liverpool.

On that note, it is a 2 hour movie. You would think that 2 hours, or 120 minutes, could be enough to tell a good story about someone. But for a man like John Lennon, it is very difficult to sum up anything about him in 2 hours, let alone some 20 years of his life or specifically focusing on 5 years of his life. The movie felt very rushed, especially when you get to the middle, going more towards the end. Things just seem to be coming out of nowhere with no explanation or background.

A very similar movie pulled off my complaint extremely well. The movie was about Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5 and all the years leading up to and involving their fame. What made the movie great, in my opinion, was that it was super long. I believe somewhere in the 3 to 4 hour range and had to be broken up into four 1 hour long episodes. Yes, it was extremely long but it mostly covered everything and didn't leave a feeling of being rushed.

Another complaint for me was the actors. It seemed like the only person who wasn't wrongly casted was Paul McCartney played by Daniel McGowan. He had the look, the voice and seemingly acted like McCartney. Now if this was a movie about McCartney then i'd feel a little better but it's not. It's a movie about Lennon. I didn't like the actor who played Lennon all too much, whether he was told to act like that or not, it just didn't look right. He over emphasized things when things should have just been normal, he wasn't nearly as witty as Lennon was at that age, nothing felt natural.

My last complaint, I promise. The soundtrack is obviously going to be comprised of early Beatles songs and lots of covers they did before they wrote their own stuff. That's fine because I sort of favor the earlier stuff over the later stuff. What I didn't like is that they had the actors actually sing the songs, or had some other voices sing The Beatles songs and use them in the movie. That definitely just turned me off. There is a reason you won't find any of The Beatles original songs on iTunes. There is a reason The Beatles Rock Band game disabled the ability to transfer beatle songs into any other Rock Band video game. They are masterpieces, not meant to be done over by anyone else. I would rather have seen the actors dumbly perform the songs as the original is being played and they're just lip syncing.

Because the movie was about John Lennon, I watched but was not impressed. Looking for a good story about John Lennon being told in movie form? Wait for Nowhere Boy coming out in October in limited release with Lennon being played by Aaron Johnson from Kick-Ass.

Overall: 1.5 out of 5.