Nowhere Boy

With the recent release of "Nowhere Boy" in the USA, I feel the need to finally blog about it. I also would like to encourage feedback, as always.

I'm going to start with the positives. No movie about them has been perfect, so we can't expect perfection. It was much better than most! "Backbeat" has a few things wrong with it, but it's really good. I like it a lot. This one was really good too. The fact that a blue-eyed actor had BECOME him by the end of the movie says a lot! I left the movie having to remind myself that it wasn't really John, and the same goes for the other characters. It was a movie with actors. "In His Life: The John Lennon Story" makes me cringe in horror throughout the whole film, for example. CRINGE! It makes me absolutely nauseous, SO many things about it. ACK! There's only a few good moments. I was definitely impressed with "Nowhere Boy."

There were problems, though. Some popular points people made are how Mendips was portrayed very incorrectly. One discussion board that I subscribe to said it looked more like 20 Forthlin Road, and they were right! The only thing I can figure is that they misrepresented it to add more dramatic appeal to his horrible childhood. That seems ridiculous. His childhood was bad enough as it was, so there's no reason to not portray Mendips as a really nice place. There's no reason to lie for dramatic effect.

I also don't remember it being very clear that his father wasn't around during his early years. They show the attempted kidnapping in Blackpool, if you want to call it that, but it's not too clear that the time before that, Fred wasn't around. Maybe I'm forgetting something, but it almost looked like he knew his dad before that. They also showed John seeing and meeting Julia for the first time as a teen, but I've read multiple times that he saw her from time to time as a kid. They weren't close until he was a teen, but they portrayed it as though he had never seen her before. Was that accurate? I'm really not sure.

The only other comment I can remember right now is the difference between necessary fiction and fact. What I mean by necessary fiction is that there has to be some fiction filling in the holes that none of us know the facts about. Was Screamin' Jay Hawkins the record that united he and his mom? We know that they bonded through Rock & Roll, but do we know what record? If we don't know what record, I think it's great that they picked the one they did to show in the movie. I think it may have been a likely choice. I don't really know! I hate the fact that fiction has to be added in, but it DOES...so I just wish there was a way to know what not to take from the film as fact.

Let me just say that some people had a problem with the way Mimi was portrayed, but I thought they captured her PERFECTLY. There was just enough love and emotion to show that she really did have a heart, in my opinion. They got it exactly right. They got them all right.

I may think of more and add it to this entry in a comment, but those are the main positives and negatives that I can remember right now. At the end of the day, it's worth buying, especially if you're a big enough fanatic to pick out at least the bigger mistakes...and if you're not, it tells the story well enough to where anyone could be well-informed from having watched it. Someone wanting to know John better will get the general idea very right.

That reminds me. John didn't witness the death of his uncle like he did in the movie. This is precisely what I'm talking about. Why would you change a fact like that? It makes no real sense!

Repeats & Eliminations

This is a very quick statement that I would LOVE to get feedback on. I just watched "A Hard Day's Night" for about the billionth time and just remembered a question I've been holding onto for years.

It always bothered me that they cut "You Can't Do That" out of the concert scene to prevent the scene from being too long...which there's no such thing. Well, there are three songs [that I noticed, anyway] that are in the movie more than once. [The song "A Hard Day's Night" understandably repeats itself. It opens the film and closes the film, and it should.] Okay..."Can't Buy Me Love," "If I Fell," and "I Should Have Known Better" all make two appearances. Two of them repeat during the concert scene. Why weren't one of those duplicates eliminated in favor of "You Can't Do That?" I LOVE all of the songs, of course, and I don't mind that they repeat...but why would they cut a song that's only going to be in the film once in favor of one that's already in there? Maybe the song wasn't as big, but real fans love ALL the songs...and I'd rather see "You Can't Do That" added into the movie or a repeated song eliminated [and that's if one HAD to be eliminated].

I don't believe any songs repeat in "Help!," "Magical Mystery Tour," or even "Yellow Submarine" because I've never had this thought about any other movie, besides the title tracks which always get repeated, like I said before.

I just don't get it. I mean...I get it, but I don't. Oh well...the movie is obviously still perfection! :]