Yesterday

This wedding of two UK filmmaking talents bouncing off the theme of one of the UK’s best known cultural institutions is somewhat less than the sum of its parts. Danny Boyle as director gets a few flashy moments and some gentle character interplay, but Richard Curtis’ script suffers from a slightly underpowered love story where the main impediment to future happiness is that, for no particularly good reason, nobody will actually say how they feel for vast amounts of time (it also suffers from Curtis having moved over the last two decades from a guy who could write great jokes to a guy who just kinda writes gentle warm vibes instead). Himesh Patel gets a nice star launching lead as the failed musician who wakes up to discover he’s the only person who knows the Beatles catalogue, and the story of his rise, in its early stages, is reasonably charming and sweet. Lily James as the love interest suffers from a character who really only exists to do a lot of not-quite-expressed yearning. And a lot of the steps along the way are pretty reasonable – the songs are performed well, there’s a goofy cameo from Ed Sheeran, and one late-in-film cameo that comes close to justifying the entire endeavor. But in the end the decision to emphasise the not-very-well-thought-out love story over anything else makes this fall a bit flatter than it probably should.