On June 28, 2019, Yesterday, a movie based around The Beatles’ music, was released, and although it follows the recent trend of music films, it approaches the style in a different way. 

Instead of featuring the specific band or artist the film is based on, Yesterday follows a fictional character named Jack Malik (Himesh Patel), a struggling singer and songwriter. After a worldwide blackout, Jack realizes that only he remembers The Beatles, eventually performing their songs to become a global phenomenon.

The idea for the movie is great. If one musical group or artist suddenly was removed from the world, few others would have an effect like The Beatles, arguably the most influential band in history.

In addition to a great story, the humor is really good and perfectly fits the film. Jack’s attempt to remember as many of The Beatles’ songs as possible and Ed Sheeran’s appearances in the film are two of the numerous amusing elements of Yesterday. 

Unfortunately, the second half of the film uses romantic themes so extensively that the main story is overpowered, whereas romantic themes were only present sporadically throughout the first half of the film. Yesterday is classified as a romantic comedy, but the romantic themes should be more balanced throughout the movie.

In addition to this damaging flaw, at around the same point, the plot falls apart. It’s filled with unanswered questions and plot holes and wraps up with an extremely unsatisfying ending, leaving far more to be desired from the film.

With the recent popularity of music-related films, it was only a matter of time until The Beatles got a movie of their own. Although Yesterday isn’t perfect, Beatles fans can appreciate some parts of the film, and romantic comedy fans may enjoy it more.

Yesterday scores a 5 out of 10.