New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

I suppose such a thing could happen with the Beatles, but it seems unlikely. And why? In one of the random thoughts that flies around my brain as I begin pre-writing in my head, it struck me that at the start of their career, The Beatles achieved an iconic status so instantly, that it must have seemed there would be nowhere to go but spiral downward or sky-rocket into oblivion. They charted 31 songs in the Billboard Hot 100 in 1964, a number as unfathomable then as it remains today. Six of those songs reached No. 1.

They won the 1964 Best New Artist Award at the Grammys (which should have been the kiss of death then and there, considering that everyone from Starland Vocal Band to Milli Vanilli has won it.) What now seems like one of the most spot-on and appropriate results ever in that category is I would argue actually a quite cynical bestowment, reflecting them as a commercial force too potent to be ignored, nothing more. Their debut film, also released that same year, both captured the zeitgeist of Beatlemania and had the daring to comment on it satirically. What would or could they do for an encore in 1965? More hits and another film.

They “only” charted 11 songs that year, but five hit the top spot, including two of the 7 songs from their second film: “Ticket to Ride” and the eponymous tune. Help! reunited The Beatles (as they are referred to in the credits, not by their individual selves) with director Richard Lester for a 90-minute Technicolor lark - as bold and breathless as that exclamation point - that strives to incorporate and gently lambaste every film genre and cliché it can while at the service of a plot that somehow holds together while making absolutely no sense whatsoever.

There is a sacrificial cult, mad scientists, a befuddled Scotland Yard detective, battlefield shenanigans, Eastern mysticism, Western product placement, excursions to climes both wintry (the Alps) and balmy (The Bahamas) and interludes at Buckingham Palace, a recording studio, and the fourplex of adjoining apartments where John, Paul, George, and Ringo spend their down time (which in Help! lasts all of 45 seconds.) There are car chases, bike chases, ski chases, and an astonishingly high body count, including, I think, an entire contingent of The Queen’s Royal Guard.

And yet The Beatles fit snugly right in the midst of all this insanity precisely because of the iconic-ness I alluded to earlier. They had already become their own genre (generic in the truest and best possible sense of the word) and Help! reinforces and builds upon this sense of identification, that as a band they were already greater than the sum of their parts, if not quite bigger than Jesus. But they each retained a sliver of individuality that could allow someone to definitely choose one as a favorite over the others. This also applies to the logistics of the plot.

Continued:       1       2       3