Yellow Submarine
Cast
John Lennon .... John (live-action epilogue) (singing voice) (as The Beatles)
Paul McCartney .... Paul (live-action epilogue) (singing voice) (as The Beatles)
George Harrison .... George (live-action epilogue) (singing voice) (as The Beatles)
Ringo Starr .... Ringo (live-action epilogue) (singing voice) (as The Beatles)
Paul Angelis .... Chief Blue Meanie; Ringo (voice)
Directed by
George Dunning
Rater # has description and review.
Rater #1
Has Not Seen Movie
Rater #2
8/10. In films, there's weird with a purpose (like David Lynch films), and
then there's weird for weirdness' sake, as is the case in Yellow
Submarine, based on The Beatles' hit song. Much like the odd quality
of Monty Python's animation, the animation here is all completely
quirky. Some things move, some don't, and some objects have things
that they shouldn't have. It's all very hard to explain, but it can
be compared to Monty Python by its pure comic irreverence.
The silly plot has the magical land of Pepperland, where music is
enjoyed by all and everything is groovy, being overtaken by the music-
hating Blue Meanies. Young Fred (Lance Percival) is sent in a yellow
submarine to find help. He finds John, Paul, George, and Ringo (who
are not voiced by themselves), who accompany him throughout various
seas and the entire world to get back down to Pepperland. Along the
way, odd things happen, puns are thrown around, and they meet a
Nowhere Man named Jeremy Hilary Boob, Ph.D (Dick Emery) who knows
everything.
As I refer back to David Lynch, there's a difference between
enjoyable weird and just plain scary weird. While Lynch is scary
weird, Yellow Submarine is just pure fun. There's no real story,
everything that happens is really random, and it couldn't really be
any better. The animation I found to be quite ahead of its time. The
animation was so zany, so�odd, that it's memorable.
The whole movie had a real tongue-in-cheek feel to it. There are
multiple puns, and much of the movie seems to be a parody. For
instance, like many spy films, the yellow submarine has everything,
and I mean everything, built into it. Of course, it's hard to take
any movie where the bad guys are called Blue Meanies seriously, but
that's a moot point.
The music is just a big compiled bunch of The Beatles' hit songs, and
many of them, such as "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", are just
filler and don't really add anything else to it. I'm not a huge
Beatles fan, but I know some of their songs, and I think about half
of them were new to me. Sometimes they helped the movie, but
oftentimes they just hindered. Not to say that they weren't
enjoyable, but they were pretty worthless. Overall, if watching an
animated movie that was obviously made while people were on drugs,
then Yellow Submarine is your best bet.
Rated G.
Running time: 90 minutes
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