I've just watched this for the first time in years. While it remains mostly a piece of pretentious bilge, I was surprised when everyone on the coach starts singing the Red Red Robin as I hadn't realised it was in it. Is this the first example of the rumoured Macca support?.
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"Good Morning, how are you?, shut up"
Not sure Boxing Day, after Val Doonican and before Petula Clark was the right scheduling for it's first showing.
It may seem pretentious now but at the time I believe it was totally different and of its time. Happy to be shot down by film buffs who will give hundreds of examples and a timeline of how each scene evolved from a French/Polish school of film making.
Oh well, better day tomorrow.
Unfortunately they never overlapped, but imagine the Pythons and Beatles together, and what a film that would have been! I guess The Rutles is the nearest we'll get to that I guess...
The music as others have already stated was it's saving grace.
I feel that they were just bored with being presented as pop star variety fodder, that churned out pop tunes.
Probably there best days were behind them as a group, but the tragic shooting of Lennon outside the Dakota put pay to any future collaboration. And popular music was the poorer for it. I felt that they needed to develop there own projects, which they did, amid a distinct bitter rivalry beetween Lennon and McCartney.
Trying to be an art house movie, it has some good ideas, but a few rewrites, and a lack of a director with a vision for the small screen was at heart it's failure.As the subsequent programme about it explained the American's just did not understand the concept of a 'mystery tour' and it's random storyline/s. Interesting that Frank Zappa's 200 motels was also met with similar distain. Interesting that Martin Scorsese cities it as an influence
If there had been a "proper" director it may have had a structure and plot line, (and been less disappointing), but that wasn't the point. It was supposed to be avant-garde and experimental. It may have been influential to other directors like Scorsese, but it was amateurish (because the Beatles were amateur film makers), and went in the wrong direction (as the bus did when it got stuck on a narrow bridge in Wales).
At least it proved that the Beatles weren't infallible, and removed the expectation of more mop-top tomfoolery from the public.
I thank you, and hope that I have passed the audition. Could the people in the posh seats please rattle their jewellery in appreciation.
Even something like the relatively conventional Fool on the Hill sequence proved a nightmare, as Paul didn't mime accurately enough!
or is stars that play with Laughing Sams Dice......?