Patriotic_American
When I first heard that the Beatles were going to release a film called The Beatles Live Project I was thrilled. I thought it was going to be a film of some of their greatest concerts like Washington DC, Shea Stadium, Tokyo Japan and others all strung together in remastered High Quality condition. Unfortunately that did not happen. Instead Ron Howard has put together another Beatles documentary movie very similar to The Compleat Beatles which was released in the 1980's, and The Beatles Anthology which was released in the 1990's. There is some live Beatles footage in this film but for the most part it is just interviews with people recalling what it was like to be at a Beatles concert. One of the people who Ron Howard interviews in the movie is Whoopi Goldberg. What on Earth is Whoopi Goldberg doing in a movie about the Beatles? The Beatles were a band who made a career of singing songs about Peace and Love, Whoopi Goldberg is a person who has made a career of preaching hatred, racism, and social division. Thankfully she does not appear in it for very long, but long enough to make any Beatles fan feel a little ill. It's not a bad movie but it could have been better. Ron Howard has made some really good movies but this is definitely not one of them.
Charles Herold (cherold)
I've always been a big fan of the Beatles. That means I'm the target audience for this movie, but it also means that a lot of it was overly familiar. As a chance to see some nice clips of the Beatles and get a better sense of their touring years this is pretty good, but the best documentaries can draw you into a story you have no interest in, while 8 Days a Week feels like it's really only aimed at fans.I felt restless through much of the first half of the movie, but things got more interesting as it progressed. Much of the strength of the movie is it conveys exactly how massive a cultural even The Beatles were; it's hard to get your head around if you weren't a part of it. The crush of the crowds is overwhelming, the way they affected people was startling, and they seemed to be generally decent people, even using their considerable influence to de-segregate an arena. Still, this feels more like some PBS documentary that somehow got a theatrical release. It's good if you like the Beatles, but it is less interesting than it should be, considering the subject.
ThrowntoReality
This is an interesting documentary, but it doesn't tell anything that the devoted doesn't already know. Somehow, the movie also seems to take for granted that the audience knows who The Beatles are and how big their impact was on popular music and society in general, as if this is something everyone already should know about.I would actually recommend "Living in the Material World" (the documentary about The Beatles' lead guitarist George Harrison) rather than "Eight Days a Week". "Living..." not only gives a much better background to who The Beatles are and where they came from, but it also digs deeper and gives the viewer a better understanding of their incredible impact in so many areas. It's also much longer, but the first half of it (which covers his time in The Beatles) is better than this whole film.The best thing about "Eight Days a Week" is not the film itself, but the fact that the live album "Live at the Hollywood Bowl" finally got remastered and re-released. The film is also decent, but there are better documentaries out there.
Andrew Marshall
I guess most people on the planet know about the Beatles. This documentary looks specifically at their touring years. By modern standards the Beatles weren't together very long. If you look at the major bands headlining festivals nowadays the chances are they've been around for 20+ years. Back in the 60's this wasn't really the norm though, so the Beatles were a very long lasting band by the standard of the time. The documentary looks at the 3 phases of the Beatles; the formative years, the single years and the music years. Those are my classifications. The formative years were played out in Hamburg and small British venues such as the Cavern Club. The single years were from around 1962 through 1965 where they pushed out a bunch of singles that dominated the charts. The music years (or drug years!) were 1966 through 1970 where they pushed the popular music boundaries and changed the direction of popular music forever. This movie is very much focused on the 1960-1965 period as that's when the Beatles played live. There is no doubt that the fervour surrounding the Beatles was unique and is unlikely to ever be repeated, so the movie is really engaging. One of the things that really stood out for me in the movie was the sheer inadequacy of the sound systems they used. Most present day hi-fi systems would have more power than the systems the Beatles were using to play to thousands of people. If you are interested in the Beatles or music in general you should definitely watch this movie.
AD
