Yellow Submarine (1968) 90m
One-of-a-kind animated fantasy by the Beatles - well not exactly: they contributed the music, but the story and voice acting was done without their involvement. The animated Fab Four are asked to help save Pepperland, a musical paradise, from occupation by the music-hating Blue Meanies. It's a magical world, and so can be reached only by magical means, viz. the submarine of the title. Consider the year of the production, the recently released 'Sgt Pepper' album's flirtation with the drug culture, and the basic concept of a dimension-traveling submarine, and you'll see why the "trip" takes up most of the story. The submarine image dominates the film's psychedelic world so comfortably that you may forget that it was originally derived from a children's song. The Beatles may have suspected this juvenile treatment for the cartoon early on, which explains why one of their songs written specifically for the movie was a children's chant ('All Together Now'). While it's great to see animated sequences to classic Beatle songs - like prototypical music video clips - it's the newer material that synthesizes best with the look that the film-makers were striving for. 'Only A Northern Song' and 'It's All Too Much' point the way to SUBMARINE's potentially wilder side; and while the script throws in 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' the rest of the Beatles extant catalogue just doesn't have the 'acid' sensibility to promote a complete head trip.
It's probably a good thing, however. Nothing dates more badly than an era, and while YELLOW SUBMARINE is recognizably the product of the late 60s it is not dependent on it. There are the prerequisite acknowledgements to flowers, butterflies, and love but this is saturated with so much visual innovation and wall-to-wall puns that the entire film could just as easily be a contemporary construct paying a postmodern homage to the era (in fact YELLOW SUBMARINE has already been emulated in video clips by Michael Jackson and Oasis). The entertainment value of the film is probably unquestionable if you're a Beatles fan, or an animation fan, or ideally both. Children raised on cartoon slapstick and rocket-paced visuals may be a little bewildered by the film's reliance of wit over action, but it'll do them good. Adults will find more to enjoy in the script's many conundrums and wall-to-wall puns, many of which refer to Beatles lyrics. Film starts to wind down near the end - the Chief Blue Meanie gets really tiresome - but at least you know it's all bound to finish with a song. It's a credit to the art direction by Heinz Edelmann that this feature has retained its entirely distinctive look decades later. The soundtrack was digitally overhauled on the film's 30th anniversary and re-introduced in cinemas to stunning effect - now awash in an ocean of huge, crystal-clear sound, SUBMARINE's voyage is truly complete.
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