Across The Universe

It's been the trend in London's West End to grab a handful of crowd-pleasing songs by a hit artist, shoehorn them into rickety plot and watch the tills go into meltdown.

Queen landed the royalties with We Will Rock You, Abba thanked us for the moulah with Mamma Mia and even Buddy Holly flew again with Buddy.

This scores something of a first with its plundering of the Beatles back catalogue and the fact that it's not a West End show but a movie.

It tells the story of Jude (as in Hey), a Liverpool dockworker who sees beyond the limited horizons of Merseyside, dumps his berd and strikes out for the United States.

Jumping ship, he hooks up with Princeton college rebel Max (Joe Anderson), an adolescent bon viveur with a taste for whacking golf balls off the college roof.

Taking him under his wing, Max introduces him to his family - and most significantly- his sister Lucy (as In The Sky With Diamonds), an Apple Pie gal with a boyfriend doing a tour in Vietnam.

Tiring of the suburban life, Max and Jude head off to the Big Apple where they finds digs in a sprawling bohemian appartment run by torch singer Sadie (Dana Fuchs). They're soon joined by Lucy (whose man has been killed in action) and love blooms with Jude.

Director Julie Taymor and writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais have whittled down 200-odd Beatles songs to thirty-three and sprinkled them liberally throughout the narrative.

Sometimes they work - a beguilingly plaintive version of I Wanna Hold Your Hand - and sometimes they don't - Jude, played by Jim Sturgess, opts for the Noel Gallagher-ish approach to the ditties and Something is consequently murdered without pity.

The plot may be worn but it's workmanlike and there some spirited versions of the songs, notably by Dana Fuch. (Bono's embarrassing turn as Dr Robert spouting I Am The Walrus is exactly the sort of collision between vanity and ego you might expect).

It's the sort of movie non-Fab Four fans may struggle to like, occupying a space somewhere below the inspired dynamics of Moulin Rouge but well above the dated dirge that was Rent.

Altogether now: "Na, na, na, na-na-na, na-na-na, hey….."

Tim Evans