After bringing us the accomplished Frida and bewildering Titus, Julie Taymor turned her attention to Across the Universe which features two young lovers named Lucy and Jude, whose experiences are set to songs by The Beatles… if you can’t guess at least two of the songs given those character names, this probably isn’t the movie for you.
Much like the filmed version of Mamma Mia, the plot of Across the Universe is really just there to stitch together elaborately staged musical numbers. An amazing 33 Beatles songs appear at some point, including my favorites Dear Prudence and Happiness Is a Warm Gun. You either really love concepts like this, or you really hate them. The FCQ for this film is a staggering 57.82 (that’s Film Contentiousness Quotient: details here), which makes it the most contentious movie we’ve featured so far.
Taymor is probably best known for her incredibly successful staging of The Lion King, so she definitely knows her way around musical numbers. But reviews for this film were extremely mixed, and Criticker users were the same. So, let’s decide right now. Across the Universe: Great or Terrible?
Across the Universe
- Great! (64%, 9 Votes)
- Terrible! (36%, 5 Votes)
Total Voters: 14
Loading ...Here are a couple battling opinions from Criticker users.
Biedronski: “This movie made me whip out my Beatles CDs. Each song was visually amazing in the movie. Joe Cocker singing “Come Together” is worth seeing alone. It was fun watching with my dad and trying to call what song was going to come up.”
flyingwhales: “What’s that sound? Oh, I think it’s John Lennon and George Harrison rolling over in their graves.”
Last week, you voted on The Butterfly Effect — Ashton Kutcher’s lone shining moment of excellence. And by a close margin, it was deemed GREAT.
And here’s our up-to-date list of the top 10 most contentious films at Criticker:
1. Across the Universe – FCQ 57.82 – Poll Result: Pending
2. Eyes Wide Shut – FCQ 57.65 – Poll Result: GREAT!
3. The Rocky Horror Picture Show – FCQ 54.41 – Poll Result: GREAT!
4. Dumb & Dumber – FCQ 51.24 – Poll Result: GREAT!
5. The Butterfly Effect – FCQ 50.92 – Poll Result: GREAT!
6. King Kong – FCQ 49.84 – Poll Result: GREAT!
7. Saw – FCQ 49.23 – Poll Result: TIE!
8. Stay – FCQ 48.94 – Poll Result: GREAT!
9. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest – FCQ 48.93 – Poll Result: TERRIBLE!
10. I Am Sam – FCQ 48.37 – Poll Result: TERRIBLE!
That’s a first. My Kumpels are really divided on this one, too.
I haven’t seen it, but now I want to.
I loved this film… I’m always surprised when I hear people say they didn’t enjoy it.
I can easily see why people wouldn’t enjoy this. As a musical lover, I liked it, but it’s a quite flawed film. It’s mostly a series of unnecessary digressions only put in place in order to get to the musical numbers (the bit with Bono, for instance, annoys me greatly), but I can forgive that when some of the music is so fantastic. I’m not a big fan of Beatles, but I enjoyed this.. Although I wouldn’t deem it “Great!”.
This is the most amazing movie i ever seen,, I love Beatles songs, the guy in the movie named jude (jim sturgless) is really handsome and i love his voice and the way he sing. It is my favorite movie! if you love THE BEATLES you must see this film.