Rti03’s review published on Letterboxd:
"John: Stop dragging things down to your own level, it's immature son.
Ringo: I thought, Well I... I thought she was a sandwich, 'til she went spare on me hand."
I have just recently seen two Beatles movies for the first time, those being A Hard Day's Night and Yellow Submarine, until seeing those movies i had of course heard of the band and i knew a few songs but seeing those two movies really inspired me to go and check them out with more dept and what i found is truly great, their music is still fresh and cool after 50 years and so were the two movies but the question is "would Help! also be great and still be fresh and cool, does the movie stand the test of time?"
Help is Directed by Richard Lester and it stars The Beatles and Leo McKern, Eleanor Bron, Victor Spinetti, Roy Kinnear and John Blutha.
"An Eastern cult discovers that the sacrificial ring is missing. Ringo, drummer of The Beatles band has it; sent by the girl (who's to be sacrificed) as a gift. Clang, Ahme, Bhuta and several cult members leave for London to retrieve the ring. After several failed attempts to steal the ring, they confront him in an Indian restaurant. Ringo learns that if he does not return the ring soon, he will become the next sacrifice. Ringo then discovers that the ring is stuck on his finger. Its a race against time; John, Paul, and George try to protect their friend while they're all being chased not only by Clang and his minions, but also by two mad scientists and the chief inspector of Scotland yard. Will Ringo be saved, or will he be sacrificed?"
Well first of all let's answer the question putted down before, "would Help! also be great and still be fresh and cool, does the movie stand the test of time?". The answer is kind of hard to give but i think i have to say no. This of the three Beatles movies i have seen is no doubt the worst, this is not a terrible movie don't get me wrong but it's no doubt a bit of a mess i have mixed feelings about this one.
It's hard to compare this movie to Yellow Submarine because Submarine is an animation but the fact is that in a lot of ways Help! is more similar to Submarine than it is to A Hard Day's Night. The three movies are very relaxed, very silly but i found A Hard Day's Night to be semi-believable but this one is more like Submarine in the sense that is completely nonsensical, it's completely crazy and too silly but that worked in Yellow Submarine well because it was an animation and we audience easily both all the nonsense we even embraced it but here i don't think the same happens.
The plot is too confusing and it makes no sense and that would be alright if that had translated into laughs...but it didn't. I love silly little movies, for example i love early Woody Allen which is kind of similar to this, 90 minute movie, very silly but also very funny i mean movies like Love and Death and Take the Money and Run are as silly as it gets and they are absolutely favorites of mine but all that silliness translates into laughs and that just does not happen often here.
The plot of A Hard Day's Night was also silly but it was less confusing and it was still more or less believable and that resulted in us caring for what was going on, on screen but here with a scrambled and not so effective direction the results are not nearly as good. There are some laughs here and there, some good puns and the Beatles and there music do carry the movie on their back for a part of the movie but when they are not screen it almost unbearable i would even say boring.
Help! is no doubt a mixed movie, it's a movie that only brought half the ingredients, it brought The Beatles and their music but forgot to bring up a screenplay or direction, the results are a not so great movie with a few good gags but that's it.
P.S: The Beatles were reportedly high as f*ck during the shoot, which kind of put a few pieces of the puzzle together, they must have smoked with the screen-writer.
Rating:C