His deadpan line delivery and awkwardly handsy performance during a romantic beach scene are endearing enough, but it was actually an outtake featuring him that really hooked me. Cutler plays Buster Bloodvessel, the tiny old man who falls in love with the comically larger-than-him Aunt Jessie. If this movie is good for one thing, it’s introducing the viewer to various interesting, somewhat mysterious, people like Mal Evans and Ivor Cutler. A word of warning, though: don’t read the man’s entire Wikipedia page unless you want to ruin your day. Knowing about Mal turns watching the movie into a “Where’s Waldo” exercise that bumps up the fun factor by at least a couple of percentage points. And I’m pretty sure Mal is the poor shirtless bastard with “Magical Mystical Boy” scrawled across his chest in the psychedelic Blue Jay Way sequence. He’s the guy who jumps into the trunk of the tour bus and holds on for dear life while Ringo takes the wheel and nearly tips the whole thing over during the race scene. He’s one of the red-robed magicians that never actually do anything. Once you spot him (he looks like a friendlier version of David Prowse in A Clockwork Orange), you can’t unspot him. He’s the giant (6’6”) in the bowler hat and thick-rimmed glasses in the background of almost every scene. These are the things you learn when you listen to that Paul commentary, and keep hearing the name “Mal” over and over and can’t help but pull up his Wikipedia page to learn more. It’s Mal that you hear clanging away on an anvil in “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” for example. He even contributed to some of the band’s songwriting and recording. He was ostensibly their roadie, but he was also the guy who would run to the store to pick up a pair of socks for John, or underwear for Ringo, apparently. Mal Evans was a bouncer at the Cavern Club, and would go on to become a sort of best friend and whipping boy for The Beatles throughout most of the 1960’s. With that in mind, here are five positive things about Magical Mystery Tour: And since I don’t want to end Beatles Month on a sarcastic, sour note, I’ve found a way to put a positive spin on MMT, inspired by the old saying “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” I have fallen on those swords on your behalf in order to gain as much appreciation for this flawed project as I possibly could. You’re certainly not going to watch the unofficial follow-up documentary distributed by a company called WeinerWorld (perhaps a subsidiary of Poundland), hosted by an aging Victor Spinetti and featuring interviews with people who were barely involved with the project, all set to a background score of off-brand versions of the songs from the film and absent any actual footage from said film, presumably due to legal reasons. You’re definitely not going to listen to the director’s commentary. And let’s face it, you’re not going to watch this two or three times. Unfortunately, that pleasantness doesn’t make for captivating cinema. And throughout it all, they seem to be having genuine fun with a big group of like-minded weirdos and close friends. The end result is a document of exactly the kind of behavior you’d expect from four orphaned boys with too much time and money on their hands: they sing, they flirt, they drive dangerously fast while racing a group of angry vicars, and just before the journey is over, they end up in a strip club to watch a lady take off her top. According to one-time Beatles Press Officer Tony Barrow in the unofficial follow-up documentary Magical Mystery Tour Memories (2008), Paul was worried that, without Epstein’s guidance, The Beatles would simply fly off to India to live with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and “never come back together again as a working band.” The film project was a way to keep them together and keep them working in the absence of Epstein’s leadership. Paul conceived the project shortly after the death of Brian Epstein, the band’s legendary manager. To be fair, after you watch this movie two or three times, especially with the director’s commentary from Paul, you start to appreciate it as an endearing snapshot of a specific moment in time. No, frolicking around in a fashionable coat doesn’t count as an idea. The first of which is an embarrassingly literal interpretation of “The Fool On The Hill” in which Paul’s heavy-handed cuteness is not enough to distract from the fact that multiple closeups of his eyeballs are used to illustrate the lyric about “the eyes in his head.” Yes, we can tell you didn’t have any actual “ideas” for this sequence, Paul. The musical sequences don’t save it, either. It’s aimless, boring and feels a little too long, even at 52 minutes. I’ll bet it’s even better than A Hard Day’s Night, and nobody realizes it! But, sadly, no. I thought, surely this has just been misunderstood. I revisited MMT hoping it would be a revelation. Look, Magical Mystery Tour (1967) is bad.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |