The 2007 film begins with promise. Jude of Liverpool sings "Girl" and we get the sense of a powerful narrative about to unfold. The film cuts to Vietnam war footage on water and a Tina Turner/Janis Joplin voice singing "Helter Skelter." From there, we see "Hold Me Tight" performed brilliantly in two places, a clean-cut American prom and the gritty Liverpudlian Cavern Club.

Unfortunately, Jude doesn't have a memorable story to tell us about a girl, and the Asian conflict will be reduced to window-dressing. Across the Universe delivers only on the promise of clever musical numbers set to Beatles songs. If that's enough to sustain you through more than two hours, then the movie is for you. Otherwise, you may find it bad-trip wearying.

Musically and visually, this is a spectacle, which would and likely will play well on stage. We've grown accustomed to shallow, sensation-high stage musicals that provide visceral thrills and moving music. Close cousins to the live concert, they don’t need to accomplish anything more.

Movies are different. Without the live connection to sustain us, we look for things such as developed characters or an interesting plot. You won't find either here. The film lurches from one incident to the next, so that the characters can sing another song and director Julie Taymor can conceal the lack of depth with dazzling visuals.

The performers, I grant, do a decent job with the material. Evan Rachel Wood, hitherto remembered as the lost little girl from Thirteen, emerges in the role of Lucy as a strong actor with an affecting voice. Dana Fuchs's sexy Sadie comes the closest to an actual character, while Jim Sturgess's Jude channels some of the Fab Four's considerable charm and energy. The musical arrangements, meanwhile, do justice to the Beatles' catalogue, while numerous guest appearances and fannish in-jokes decorate the proceedings.

Each new development, however, merely leads to another song which then leads nowhere, man. Plots meander like a restless wind inside a letter box; they stumble blindly as they make their way across the Beatles’ verse.

If you laughed at that last line, you might enjoy this film. If you're groaning, but thinking it was sort of clever, you might like the things I liked. If you want to tear your eyes out for having read it, you probably won't enjoy Across the Universe.

The movie gives us Vietnam, protest rallies, the hippie human mandala, and a concert on a roof. A radical says he wants a revolution, and an artist makes a strawberry statement. Our heroes join a Ken Kesey-inspired "Dr. Roberts" (Bono) and his band of Merry Pranksters on a Magical Mystery Tour/Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. They drop in on a counterculture guru who is leary of them and refuses to meet with the Doc. Roberts leaves the main cast behind and they enter an hallucinogic circus, peppered with Blue Meanies and a psychedelic military band, before resuming their regular lives.

None of this amounts to anything. Nothing matters in this film. The characters are never developed and so their choices mean nothing. This need not be a problem in a musical, but Across the Universe maintains a pretense of gravity.

Two characters die, one in a war and the other, a race riot. Their deaths (accompanied by a powerful rendition of "Let it Be") motivate other characters, but we learn nothing about the dearly departed nor discover the real impact their deaths have had on the living. Significant generational conflicts emerge—and then never get addressed again. Maxwell goes off to the 'Nam. We get a scary, trippy musical number about his fears and a brief glimpse of the war, but nothing that really suggests what that experience meant for him. A strong hospital sequence alludes to substance abuse among veterans-- and then the movie forgets about it. Dear Prudence wanders in and out of the film without apparent motive. She's both gay and Asian-American in a culture that had more than its share of prejudices, but her ancestry exists so the film can have its token and her lesbianism is so underplayed that one could easily miss it. In 2008, these things might not matter as much. In a film that includes Martin Luther King's assassination and concludes a year before the Stonewall Riots, shortchanging them seems shoddy.

The gratuitous, thoughtless use of serious subject matter is the hallmark of an inferior storyteller, one who gestures to important topics in the hopes that this will make the story seem deep, but fears exploring them. This approach is also offensive to those whose lives are actually touched by these issues.

Across the Universe proves a far better film than the last Beatles-based movie musical, but since that was 1978's Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band with Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees, the bar on this one sits pretty low. We have a bright, shiny spectacle that espouses radical politics but lacks depth. Its excesses become, at times, self-parody, but we can forgive much because the music entertains, and the experience looks beautiful. The cynical might argue this makes Across the Universe the perfect tribute to the High Sixties.

I was only a child then, but I'd like to think the era deserves a little better.

Director: Julie Taymor
Writers: Dick Clement and Ian Le Franais

Cast:
Evan Rachel Wood as Lucy Carrigan
Jim Sturgess as Jude
Joe Anderson as Max Carrigan
Dana Fuchs as Sadie
Martin Luther McCoy as JoJo
T.V. Carpio as Prudence
Angela Mounsey as Martha
Robert Clohessy as Jude's father
Spencer Liff as Daniel
Nicolas Lumley as Cyril
Michael Ryan as Phil
Lisa Hogg as Molly
Bono as Dr. Roberts
Eddie Izzard as Mr. Kite
Selma Hayek as several nurses
Ellen Hornberger as Julia
Joe Cocker as various street people