LogFAQs > #933089587

29. Help!

Genny: 13
Scarlet: 18
Inviso: 19
KBM: 21
Johnbobb: 32
JONA: 32
Karo: 35

Genny - Good fun set to Beatles music. Who needs a coherent plot when you've got that much to begin with?

Scarlet - Stupid but endlessly charming, theres an innate realness to everything the Beatles do on screen. If only movies didnt need plots, this would be a success.
Best Song: Its the Beatles, I mean...

Inviso - This movie was justwacky. This felt like when we watched the Woody Allen Casino Royale parody, in just how little connectivity and plot there really seemed to be. Ringo randomly gets a magic ring, and EVERYONE spends the rest of the movie either trying to kill him, or trying to get the ring off his hand. This is barely even a musical. It occasionally has completely detached moments, where the Beatles just get to perform one of their songs in a strange location, and then the film moves on. The weird title cards are amusing, and honestly, the tone of this film occasionally reaches into Monty Python territory, which is always good for a laugh. Unfortunately, the Beatles are far more wholesome than the Monty Python gang, so they lack a lot of the irreverence and debauchery needed to really sell the zaniness of everything going on. Thats it. Thats all I really have to say. Its a hard film to rank, because it was REALLY entertaining sometimes, but when it wasnt being REALLY entertaining, it was tough to get through.

KBM - Why I Chose It: While the Beatles' debut film from the previous year, A Hard Day's Night (also directed by Richard Lester), was more critically well-received in its time, Help! has arguably proven more influential over time. The musical numbers in particular have been credited with shaping the development of music videos, as well as suggesting the particular style of British humo(u)r that would explode in popularity just a few years later with the rise of Monty Python. At the time, the Beatles themselves were not happy with the finished product, but over time they, along with audiences, have tended to look back on it more fondly.

My Thoughts: Help! was a difficult one for me to place. I do love The Beatles, and I also have a fondness for random, Python-esque British humo(u)r. However, for the first thirty minutes or so, I was bored out of my mind. The acting from The Beatles was very bad, the setup with Ringo's ring was thin and pretty lame, and the most interesting thing in that opening half hour was the title card saying Seeking enlightenment as to rings, they approached the nearest Oriental (goddammit, '60s). It's honestly somewhere around this point, though, that the jokes start actually hitting more than they miss, and that the band's rather blas approach to acting actually starts working to the movie's benefit. The musical numbers are obviously good, if certainly a bit random, and over the course of the film's runtime it developed a frantic sort of energy the opening act was missing, and that led to me basically having enjoyed myself when all was said and done. I can't say it's a really good movie (definitely not as good at this type of humo(u)r as Python, but it's an entertaining enough sit once you get past the boring set-up, and, in its own way, it was even kind of ground-breaking.

Favo(u)rite Song: The Night Before

Johnbobb - Look, I like the song Help! as much as the next guy, but this isn't a good movie. You're better off just watching a playlist of Beatles music videos on YouTube then you are trying to watch this slightly racist nonsense trying to string along a bunch of solid songs. I can only drop it so far, because it does have a pretty great soundtrack, but that honestly just kind of feels like cheating.
Favorite song: Help!

JONA - While there is some initial enjoyable goofiness, the movie starts to get repetitive quickly with the Beatles just going to different locations, escaping from assassins and singing songs. The Beatles also arent exactly good actors and a bunch of jokes dont land, since its just the movie trying to be wacky.
Favorite Song: Ticket to Ride

Karo - Ringo Starr's new jewelry turns out to be some cursed religious relic, and so various ethnically stereotyped villains accost our shaggy haired heroes with saturday morning cartoon antics in an attempt to recover it.
The film is an absolute trainwreck with an idiotic plot that feels like some unfunny mockery of a monty python routine made in some third world country and dipshit hijinks from 'characters' that are not only less funny than the Minions but harder to understand.
Even more dumb is how they interrupt the story every ten minutes to do an out of place music video that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie. Not even the slightest attempt is made to organically insert these songs into the film, for example you have them skiing in the swiss alps while singing a song about someone's girlfriend taking a train ride. It feels less like they composed the songs for the movie and more that they just made the movie to promote their new album.
It is a cheap half-arsed attempt to capitalize on the band's popularity, and no doubt took its title from the screams of the test audiences as they clawed their way through the theater doors with their fingernails, bleeding from every orifice.

Score: 14/100

Best Song: 'You've Got to Hide Your Love Away'