Review of Yesterday (2019) by Metaflix — 03 Jul 2019

The premise to Danny Boyle’s ‘Yesterday’—that a struggling musician realizes he's the only person on Earth who can remember The Beatles after a strange worldwide blackout—is incredibly alluring. Too bad the film itself effectively wastes the opportunity to explore such a novel idea in any sort of resonant or meaningful way.

The biggest problem with Boyle’s approach is how formulaic the entire movie is. There’s the dedicated small town talent manager, the jerk part-time boss, the one supportive fan, and the dopey sidekick. The performer’s musical career, played by a wonderful Himesh Patel, isn’t going anywhere until the Beatles thing happens. Then fame, success, and a stereotypical super-agent steps in. Before we know it the singer-songwriter has everything he ever wanted but is miserable. There’s no need to dwell on the finer details or the love story because you can probably guess them all already. Sure, there are a number of things that are disappointing with the film, but most of all it’s that Danny Boyle couldn’t make ‘Yesterday’ something on a similar level as ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ despite ample opportunity to do so.