I finally got around to seeing this John Lennon Biopic. The beginning gave me hope this would be a high quality accurate film, however it soon lapsed into what I feared it would become: an overdramatized and over the top take on John's relationship with Aunt Mimi and mother Julia.
The film promoters promoted this as the ONLY film EVER to depict John's childhood and the formation of the Beatles...I beg to differ. As a Beatles' buff I've seen MANY other biopics, most of them hit and miss like this one. I think the first part of the film was well done, and accurate in depicting John's homelife, and how he got exposed to Elvis, rock, Paul and George.
My big qualm again is how they wrote in the fictional dialogue based only loosely on the facts of John's family life. The dialogue soon lapsed into overblown unbelievable high drama, when we know John was MUCH less confrontational than that. So all that garbage with him confronting Julia and Mimi is obviously total fiction (with a few true facts thrown in for good measure).
It's unfortunate that they took that low road, since this had the potential to be a quintessential John Biopic, and many aspects WERE authentic, including wardrobe, location, and music. But they chose to make it into a soap-opera-ish version that John himself would have scoffed at. Overall worth seeing, but only if you skip over the high drama segments.
Finally passing grades on the acting, however most of he characters don't really remind one of the actual people; i.e. if you didn't KNOW they were supposed to be who they were you wouldn't be able to easily guess.
The film promoters promoted this as the ONLY film EVER to depict John's childhood and the formation of the Beatles...I beg to differ. As a Beatles' buff I've seen MANY other biopics, most of them hit and miss like this one. I think the first part of the film was well done, and accurate in depicting John's homelife, and how he got exposed to Elvis, rock, Paul and George.
My big qualm again is how they wrote in the fictional dialogue based only loosely on the facts of John's family life. The dialogue soon lapsed into overblown unbelievable high drama, when we know John was MUCH less confrontational than that. So all that garbage with him confronting Julia and Mimi is obviously total fiction (with a few true facts thrown in for good measure).
It's unfortunate that they took that low road, since this had the potential to be a quintessential John Biopic, and many aspects WERE authentic, including wardrobe, location, and music. But they chose to make it into a soap-opera-ish version that John himself would have scoffed at. Overall worth seeing, but only if you skip over the high drama segments.
Finally passing grades on the acting, however most of he characters don't really remind one of the actual people; i.e. if you didn't KNOW they were supposed to be who they were you wouldn't be able to easily guess.