Yesterday: A Sweet Rom-Com That Asks, “What If The Beatles Never Existed?”

From the writer of “Love Actually” and the director of “Trainspotting” comes a delightful romantic comedy about a world that’s forgotten The Beatles, and one man who decides to take advantage of it.

Jack Malik (Himesh Patel), a struggling musician, has been playing in dive bars and other second-rate venues in his hometown for years. Only his devoted manager, Ellie (Lily James), believes in Jack’s music. Jack himself is constantly on the verge of giving up and becoming a schoolteacher. After a disastrous gig at a music festival, he decides to quit music for good. But while cycling home, he finds himself in the middle of a strange technological anomaly – a worldwide blackout. Then, he gets hit by a bus. When Jack wakes up, he discovers that the anomaly has mysteriously erased certain things from pop culture: Coca-Cola, cigarettes, and, most tragically, The Beatles. (Oasis is gone too, but that seems logical.) Jack decides to reintroduce the world to the music of the Fab Four and, as a bonus, become incredibly famous.

Richard Curtis, the master of the almost-forgotten high-concept rom-com, is back in the game. His last full-fledged work, “About Time,” came out way back in 2013. In that film, Curtis gave a nice guy with Domhnall Gleeson’s face the ability to travel through time to win over his dream girl. Five years later, it’s a different guy and a different ability, but the goal is ultimately the same.

A Predictable, Yet Comforting, Formula

This is the most common criticism of “Yesterday,” and also its main defense. The film fits so seamlessly into Curtis’s consistent filmography. It’s true: the author is clearly comfortable in his own writing and has no intention of leaving that comfort zone. The monolithic horizon of expectations – formed in anyone who’s ever seen a Curtis film – never wavers, never even hints at any kind of creative breakthrough. Well, almost. There’s one exception.

The Talent Paradox

Around the middle of the film, after the protagonist gains his ability (and a head injury), “Yesterday” presents an interesting idea: The Beatles’ songs are undeniably brilliant, but talent means absolutely nothing today – if it ever did. The funniest scenes in “Yesterday” involve the hero’s expectations being shattered. A performance of the title song moves no one; the opening notes of “Let It Be” don’t inspire reverence in his parents; and an exclusive Beatles concert in a random pub doesn’t make the patrons look up from their beers. “Yesterday” briefly ventures into the territory of witty industry satire, mocking the vast gap in show business between skill and the ability to network and brown-nose.

Ed Sheeran to the Rescue?

In the plot, Jack wouldn’t have achieved anything if Ed Sheeran hadn’t noticed him. At this point, the industry story should have taken off, but Curtis suddenly takes a step back, giving the hero a long-awaited “breakthrough moment” (singing “Back in the U.S.S.R.” in Moscow, alone, without drums, opening for Sheeran). The critique of show business is reduced to the cartoonishly mercenary character played by Kate McKinnon, and the story quickly devolves into melodramatic twists and turns between Jack and Lily James’s character.

A Formulaic, But Enjoyable, Ride

Curtis takes a wildly interesting concept and quickly fits it into a genre template: from ability to triumph, from triumph to reflection and the realization that the ability isn’t needed after all, only honesty with oneself, love for one’s mother, and kindness to younger siblings. The film is well-written, touching, and often funny (though nothing is funnier than the Russian browser “Yaroslav” mentioned in the movie). Himesh Patel is good in the lead role, Lily James is endlessly charming, and everything is so neat, heartfelt, and professionally talented that it’s impossible to hate “Yesterday,” or even feel any genuine negativity towards it. Yes, it’s just another Richard Curtis rom-com. But we haven’t seen a Richard Curtis rom-com in five years, and, as much as we might hate to admit it, we’ve missed them a little.

Boyle vs. Curtis: A Director’s Dilemma

It’s not entirely clear why Curtis didn’t sit in the director’s chair himself. This is his material, requiring and tolerating no other vision. It would have made much more sense, and there would have been fewer complaints, I think. But for some reason, he called on Danny Boyle to direct the film – a director who was almost a genius and has long outgrown the local text. As a result, the conflict between Boyle’s aggressive cinematography and Curtis’s saccharine script is perhaps more interesting than any conflict within the film itself. All these extreme Dutch angles and distorted close-ups, aesthetic static and punk drive: many scenes look as if the director, crushed by the material, is trying to assert himself and remind us whose film we are watching. But it doesn’t work; the author’s inclusions remain alien, and Curtis’s dictatorship occupies the screen. Just like in the song, once he was young, directing “Trainspotting,” and he didn’t need anyone’s help. And now – just a loud “Help!” from under the rubble of Curtis’s script.