In My Life

Director Danny Boyle's Yesterday (2019) is a scary movie. While this film looks, sounds, and acts as a light-hearted fantasy musical comedy, it is thematically an all-too-real reflection of our present-day human society's general undervaluing of musical artists in addition to the music industry's disregard for artists and their craft. That is a good thing, by the way.

Yesterday follows Jack Malik (played by Himesh Patel), a struggling musician, about giving up on his dreams when he gets hit by a bus during a worldwide blackout. Once he awakens, he realizes that he is the only person who remembers the Beatles and their music, as they have seemingly been wiped from history. The following events involve Jack as he passes tunes such as "Let it Be" and "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" off as his own with often-humourous results.

This film has a simplicity and charm that cannot be denied, primarily thanks to Patel and Lily James' adorable chemistry. Had this picture featured any other actors, I would not have cared for their characters as much as I did. The supporting cast does solid work as well, namely Ed Sheeran and Kate McKinnon. Sheeran appears as himself, and his natural charm, line delivery, and comedic timing were pleasant surprises. Compared to other musicians' movie cameos, Sheeran's is one of the better ones. Speaking of show-stealers, McKinnon's performance as Debra Hammer, Sheeran's scenery-chewingly obnoxious manager, takes her character's sleaziness to an eleven, which works entirely in the movie's favor. Debra also serves as an all-too-real caricature of emotionally shallow and greedy entertainment business figures who use their talent as money-producing products, which would have fit right at home in an episode of The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror.

Simultaneously, Yesterday's simplicity in execution comes at a cost, for there are multiple missed opportunities to explore deeper and darker themes about the effects of being an overnight megastar in the music industry, like the moral temptations that come with them and the strains that fame can inflict on one's personal life. One cut sequence featured in the trailer exemplified this. The said sequence involved Jack singing "Something" on The Late Late Show with James Corden for a character played by Ana de Armas, who later kisses him. While brief, the scenes could have contributed to the film's eventual romantic rift between Jack and James' character of Ellie. Yes, this would have been highly cliched, but at least the execution of the film's plot would not have played it as safe as it did.

While Yesterday does not turn into the dark Black Mirror episode like I hoped it would, it is an agreeable and breezy watch that both Beatles fanatics and casual viewers can enjoy. Do some of the film's characters sometimes act bizarrely, and are a few of them somewhat offputting in nature? Yes, but aside from the required suspension of disbelief, there are plenty of catchy covers of iconic Beatles tunes from a talented actor who has a bright future ahead of him.

Final Score: 7 out of 10