Yellow Submarine

"Yellow Submarine" is a great film but it's not because of the plot or even the whimsical, non-sequitur filled dialogue. "Yellow Submarine" works best as a series of loosely connected music videos that pre-date MTV by 12 years.

If you grew up with MTV and you think that most music videos consist of 80's Hair-Metal bands "in concert" or rappers in hot tubs with women in bikinis, take a look at some of the musical numbers in "Yellow Submarine".

You have "Only a Northern Song" which is presented with Andy Warhol style pop-art images. "Nowhere Man" is a whimsical, trippy, rainbow colored cartoon. "When I'm Sixty Four" is illustrated by a "Sesame Street" style numerical countdown. Even "All Together Now", for which The Beatles themselves actually appear on screen, contains little camera tricks and quick cut edits that are common tools of more recent music videos.

The two best segments in the movie, in my opinion, are "Eleanor Rigby" and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". "Eleanor Rigby" uses black and white still photos of what is apparently Liverpool rotoscoped with occasional splashes of color to illustrate the dreariness of the lives of "all the lonely people." The full-color rotoscoped images for "Lucy", such as the can-can dancing chorus line and the horse running in the field, are beautiful.

If you are a fan of The Beatles, great animation, or music video, this film is for you.

Next to FANTASIA, YELLOW SUBMARINE is one the best animated feature films ever made. We will always remember the sixties pop-art imagery along with some of the best dialog to grace cartoon-land ("I haven't had so much fun since Pompeii....""I'm a born lever puller.") not to mention some of the best music to come from the best set of musicians the 20th century has produced! This is a kid's film at heart (wild adventures in strange distant lands, weird monsters, loud over bearing villians....) My only criticism is in the re-mastering, in 1999. The song "Hey, bulldog..." is added toward the end (A scene where the fab four meet up with a bunch of the Blue Meanies' bulldogs, and defeat them with the power of music.) The scene looks hastily slapped together,like something out The Beatles cartoon series (which was hated by the real life Liverpool lads. That's why they were originally not too thrilled with the announcement of this animated film.) There is a reason why these scenes are deleted, to allow classics like this to flow so easily on the screen. Anyway, a great, great classic.

'Yellow Submarine' is a visual stunner and an extremely well-scripted movie. There are lots of Beatles in jokes, George's fascination with Indian music and John's fascination with scientific theories are lampooned, the Beatles' power is joked about ("Nothing's Beatle Proof!") and poor old Ringo is just plain made fun of. The movie itself is arguably the most psychedelic ever made. The Beatles' descent into Pepperland is just one psychedelic scene after the other. The animation isn't great, but everything is just done so strange and fun that it becomes absolutely irresistible. The colors, landscapes, and creatures are just really different and vivid and vibrant. The songs are fit in very, very well (although "Nowhere Man" is undoubtedly the best sequence). Overall this works great as a musical or as an animated film, and there's definitely a lot of priceless, subtle dialog. I would name it one of the top 20 animated films of all time, really. Definitely worth watching, just because there simply isn't any movie like it.

10/10

After learning that my girlfriend had only see Yellow Submarine while stoned, and seemed convinced that was the reason she liked it, I insisted she watch it unstoned. She still liked it, and it was every bit as good as I recalled.

The story makes no sense, as the movie struggles to turn a bunch of random songs into some sort of narrative, but that hardly matters. The pun-filled script is blithely entertaining, the scenarios are wonderfully imaginative, the songs are terrific (of course), and the visuals are beyond amazing. The animation has a lose, experimental feel that was extraordinary at the time and is even more so in the days of digital animation.

Surprisingly, the weakest aspects of the movies are the Beatles' contributions, which consists of four of their lesser songs (although I do really like Only a Northern Song even though my girlfriend points out it's quite similar to Harrison's previous If I Needed Someone). None of the new songs really helped with creating the story and thus feel a little shoehorned in.

The first time I saw this movie I was 10 years old and I loved it. Now I'm 58 and I still love it. It is a gloriously colorful display of 60s pop art that should be seen by anyone who loves animation, the Beatles, or weird psychedelic art.

This could have been poorly done had it not been for a sense of quality that seemed to be a part of the Beatles and their people. This is the wonderful story of society that develops over time and come under threat. But it is not the usual "save the world" kind of thing but rather the creation of a world like we've never seen. There is a surreal being to it. It is colorful and engaging. Of course, what is most impressive is the integration of Beatles music into the plot. "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is a great example of psychedelic visuals. But overall, it is a movie that never bores. Its images are striking and there is an array of the most wonderful characters.