Yellow Submarine (1968)

What would a sequal to this look like?--------------------------------------------------------

even if you're not a Beatles fan, even if "psychedelia" isn't your thing, I do believe this 60s time-capsule has enough going for it to where it's worth watching. Maybe not multiple times, but at least once.This bears saying because it IS kind of stupid, when you break it down to its bare elements. The idyllic English countryside fantasy-world of "Pepperland" has been taken over by the "Blue Meanies," and only the Beatles can stop them. So it's a surreal but nonsensical journey from the Beatles' Liverpool to Pepperland, punctuated by a bunch of their songs which have very little to do with the story. Plus a handful of jokes which are painfully un-funny.This totally would be an embarrassingly trite cash-grab if not for the truly interesting and unique art direction, which really has nothing to do with the Beatles at all except for them both exploiting a psychedelic look. This Czech guy, Heinz Edelmann, designed everything with this neon-tubed, pop-art, minimalist look that really works.Even better are the weird images and effects that pop up, especially during the musical sequences. Like the Oscilloscope under the face-caricatures in "Only a Northern Song," or the rotoscoped acrobats in "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." I can see how many would find this all to be just artsy-fartsy nonsense, but for me it works. Even without any apparent underlying meaning, it somehow feels both whimsical and sad, in a good way.In summation, this movie is well-financed Outsider Art. It's trite, but it's also well-developed in some ways. And there's nothing else out there quite like it.

The otherworldly Pepperland has been taken over by the ruthless music hating Blue Meanies. The people are immobilized and the colors drained. Old Fred escapes on the Yellow Submarine and recruits the members of The Beatles to bring back the music. They meet a strange creature named Jeremy Hillary Boob Ph.D. They arrive in Pepperland and revive the mayor. The guys go off to battle the Blue Meanies and their minions with music.This is most noted for its psychedelic colors and imagery. The story is pretty basic with some great Beatles tones. It has the Blue Meanies and all the rest. The first hour is a meandering adventure in various crazy locations. The guys finally meet the Blue Meanies in the last half hour. It has some of the most imaginative vibrant visuals.

Intentionally marketed as a "head movie" (at the very height of the flower-power craze of the mid-1960s), Yellow Submarine is an animated offering, with songs, that probably comes across a helluva lot better if you're stoned.But, if you don't indulge in such mind-numbing, I mean, mind-altering activities as this, then you'll surely find yourself (like I did) at a disadvantage, feeling somewhat short-changed by this decidedly disappointing and over-hyped "Beatles" movie.Featuring some really terrible humor, a boring story-line, and flat, uninspired pop-art animation, I view Yellow Submarine as being something of a "message" movie.Even though this film's "message" is somewhat vague, one can clearly tell that Yellow Submarine was a movie intended to make The Beatles more money (which it did) by trying to deceive the viewer into believing that The Fab 4 actually cared about more than just money (which they probably didn't).This is one of those movies that just hasn't aged very well in the 46 years since its 1968 release. To me, Yellow Submarine's story seems to be geared more to naive children, rather than to intelligent, thinking adults.One of this film's biggest downfalls was that a good number of The Beatles' songs that riddled the story (such as Eleanor Rigby, Nowhere Man, & When I'm 64) just didn't fit very well into its plot-line which focused on a crisis in Pepperland that was provoked by an all-out attack from the Blue Meanies.