Movie Review: The Beatles - Eight Days A Week

We don’t learn anything new from The Beatles—Eight Days a Week (besides Whoopi Goldberg's feelings on the Fab Four), but its restored live footage might warrant a ticket to ride.

Is there anything left to say about The Beatles?

We can agree they’re the biggest and best band the world has ever known. They’re also stars of one of the best ever movies: A Hard Day’s Night. Their domination of our cultural sphere is complete. They won.

However, we can also agree their eight years’ worth of recorded material has already been well scrutinised and repackaged in the decades since their breakup. (Thanks to the Anthology albums, we’ve even heard them noodling in the studio on half-realised ideas. No other artist has been so fastidiously documented, except maybe Justin Bieber.)

Director Ron Howard is hoping we’ve been waiting for Whoopi Goldberg to chime in with her reflections on the lads from Liverpool before we close the book on them permanently.

In The Beatles—Eight Days a Week, his superfluous documentary on the Fab Four's touring years (’63 to ‘67), Howard combines electrifying if well-trod live performances with inexplicably-selected talking heads.

Seriously: Goldberg, Sigourney Weaver, Eddie Izzard and Richard Curtis are frequently returned to for their thoughts on Beatlemania, from their highly specific vantage points. (Goldberg and Weaver at least saw them in concert; Curtis was near their hotel once; Izzard is from the UK?)

Much better are the reflections by the actual players.

Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, the last remaining Beatles, good-naturedly share their well-known tour stories without a hint of exhaustion, while the ghosts of John Lennon and George Harrison offer commentary by way of archival footage.

The general thrust of their recollections? As teens, they had a laugh touring the globe in their matching suits and haircuts, but as the feverish fandom began to drown out their artistic aspirations, they retreated into the studio (to create audacious albums like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band).

Howard, an American, mostly—and myopically—emphasises the Beatles’ influence on the United States, though he at least establishes the context in which they became megastars. I suppose it's good of him to put a concise telling of their tale in one place for any newcomers (and by newcomers, I mean, to the planet). Still, the question 'why now?' has to be asked.

The best argument for the film's existence—as a one-week-only special event for cinemas—is the debut of a 4K-resolution restored version of their 1965 concert at New York’s Shea Stadium. It plays in full after the credits; snippets of footage appear during the documentary proper.

And that’s ultimately the reason Eight Days a Week—a pointless, sometimes baffling exercise—is calming, compelling viewing. Who wouldn’t want to see John, Paul, George and Ringo perform their greatest hits on the big screen, in their most impressive audio fidelity to date?

Whoopi sure would. We know this now.

3/5

In cinemas September 15. Rated M for coarse language.