DELETE THE BEATLES

Band erased from history in sly, audacious Yesterday

Imagine if The Beatles had never existed. It was devastating enough for me as a teenager when the band broke up. How could life as we know it go on? If there had never been any Beatles, I rationalized grimly, at least we wouldn't know what we'd missed.

In his antic and audacious new movie, Yesterday, director Danny Boyle poses an even gnarlier idea: suppose The Beatles had existed, and enjoyed their incredible nine yeas of productivity together — but then suddenly disappeared from the collective memory of basically everyone on Earth?

Everyone but one guy.

Imagine the potential for comedy (not to mention plunder and exploitation) if that guy were a struggling singer-songwriter who could take his pick from the entire song catalog of the Fab Four, certain that no one in the audience had ever heard of John, Paul, George, or Ringo.

Scripted by veteran Richard Curtis (Four Weddings And A Funeral; Love Actually), for the ever genre-bouncing Boyle, Yesterday is a sly, persuasive morality play about the wages and nature of success dressed up as a pop-cultural comedy.

It's also as entertaining as hell, especially for those of us who do remember The Beatles, thank you very much, and will appreciate every in-joke, downbeat, and visual and audio cue Boyle employs with such shameless glee throughout his tall tale.
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