Yesterday

An idle daydream gets the big-screen treatment in director Danny Boyle’s Yesterday, with Himesh Patel starring as Jack Malik – a failed modern-day rocker who gets a second chance at fame after being hit by a bus and waking in a world where he’s the only person who remembers The Beatles. It’s a charming fantasy that mostly suffers from not having anything to say about what it means that artists have that kind of idle daydream. It’s also no fun for music geeks who’d love to see their own daydream of a world without The Beatles. Pop culture seems to have just plodded along in Yesterday’s realm, without innovative crooners like Bobby Darin and Buddy Greco stepping in to turn the folk movement into a new chapter of rock ‘n’ roll. We don’t even get to see The Doors emerging as the new Fab Four, since they could skip The Beatles and just draw on being influenced by Dean Martin and the beatniks. At least dedicated Beatles fans will notice some sly insight that contrasts Kate McKinnon’s sleazy record executive with the absence of a Brian Epstein. The film still settles into being a lightweight love story that should’ve been a caustic comedy. That includes ignoring how Malik wouldn’t find much love today as a guy who’s pushing thirty while making his big chart debut singing about a girl who was just seventeen.

[PG-13]