Review of The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years (2016) by Kyle N — 23 Sep 2016

The first thing to say is that I'm not a massive Beatles fan, per se. That isn't to say that I dislike The Beatles since I think the only people that actually dislike them are either members of ISIS or the North Korean government, but I've never been a fanboy or gone out of my way to curate their works or something.

So, looking at this from a rather neutral perspective, this documentary proved to be a bit frustrating given that it's watchable and competently made, but its uneven structure and focus make the errors just noticeable enough to detract from the experience, leaving for a bit of an unsatisfying result.

The movie recounts The Beatles' tours from 1962 to 1966, comprised of talking heads and archive footage including archived interviews from the two dead members of the band. It's all edited together in a cohesive manner, put together in a lively way that allows the viewer to quickly fall into the hype that took over the world at the time.

If you want to see a ton of footage of teenage girls screaming hysterically and fainting, then this is the movie for you. The interviews all add substance and aren't excessive, and the movie balances the archive footage with the graphics and interviewers well.

The media on display here is nicely proportional, and you get a good idea of what made The Beatles so likable (unless you somehow didn't know that already). The movie is dripping with nostalgia, and that's really fun for a while.

Note that I said "for a while". The film as a whole feels back-heavy and this has to do with the structure of it. I'm not sure if this has to do with Ron Howard's background as a narrative filmmaker instead of a documentary filmmaker, but what the film focuses on can be frustrating.

At least half of the movie, which is about 100 minutes, revolves around the band's existence as a collective heartthrob and seemingly omnipresent force around the world. The footage of teenage girls losing their minds over the four of them gets old after a while and get repetitive.

The movie then finds its footing again when it begins to explore the band's frustration with stardom and progression towards Eastern-influenced music and the appearance of their mysterious facial hair.

This is all genuinely interesting, but this and their last few albums are discussed for about ten minutes at the most and then it ends all of a sudden with their final performance playing over part of the credits.

It feels really anticlimactic, and it doesn't quite seem intentional. I can definitely appreciate The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years (although I don't appreciate its long name), and although I enjoyed myself for a majority of its runtime, I can't say that I liked it overall.

What Howard chooses to depict and how long he decides to do so is increasingly frustrating, and it's the ending that solidifies the fact that this movie comes really close to working overall, but alas, it doesn't quite.

6.6/10, okay, one thumb (barely) down, (barely) below average, etc.