Recently, the store where Chris and I rent our laser discs decided to switch to a DVD-centered business and therefore would sell off its entire laser disc rental library. The way it went sounded like copy for an action movie poster:
It's Time To Buy.
The place was packed; imagine 100 people standing in a store that has a comfortable capacity of about twelve. The lasers were stacked, in random order, in boxes all throughout the store. You had to push and shove your way to get anything decent.
So there I was, pushing and shoving as best I can, grabbing the occasional title (Deliverance, Rosemary's Baby, Ordinary People) and then....out of the corner of my eye....I see Sgt. Pepper.
I think I knocked over three people trying to get it.
So, anyway, Chris and I leave the sale with thirty-eight lasers total. Happily, I plop down with Sgt. Pepper in the player, trying to figure out why I have this attraction to the movie.
I know now why I wanted the movie so badly.
It was so I could make sure that it was destroyed after viewing it, so no one else would have to go through the torture I did.
Good Lord, where do I begin. Watching this movie was like watching a train wreck - it's horrible, terrible, vile and repugnant, but you just can't turn away. I sat there, flinching, daring the movie to get worse (and then it would). Ugh.
For those've you who have never had the pleasure of watching this movie, it goes like this.
SCENE: 1970'S.
ROCKET SCIENTIST #1: Hey, let's piece a whole bunch of Beatles songs together into a movie! We can call it "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band!"
ROCKET SCIENTIST #2: Hey, let's have the Bee Gees play three of the four members!
ROCKET SCIENTIST #3: And Peter Frampton can play the fourth!
ROCKET SCIENTISTS 1-3: It'll be brilliant! Yay!
End Scene.
I have no problem with the Bee Gees. Honestly. I like 'em quite a bit. Even before they were disco. "Holiday" is really quite a nice song - almost Beatlesque. (After all, there are those who claim that "Bee Gees" stands not for "Brothers Gibb", but "Beatles Group.") They appeared on the gazebo in the middle of Heartland (the town where the movie takes place), singing along happily, and it was okay. Not fantastic, but okay.
Then, Peter-Frickin'-Frampton burst forth and everything just went downhill from there.
Aigh, aigh, aigh. What on earth were the chicks of the 70's thinking? "Oh, we're going to throw all our love and devotion at this frizzy blond-haired guy who looks like a girl!" (Some would say to me, "Okay, then, explain why you think Steve Buscemi is attractive," and I'd say "It's my web site, I ask the questions.")
So the movie spirals down into the abyss. There's some plot about the magical instruments that keep everyone in town happy and in line (sounds Stepford-ish to me), and they're stolen by.... you guessed it, Mean Mr. Mustard (sigh). The "main" instrument, the coronet, is vaguely heart-shaped. I wonder if you could actually play a coronet that has a relatively sharp bend in the middle of it. So, Mr. Mustard steals the instruments and gives them to various people (Steve Martin, Alice Cooper and Aerosmith, the Evil Band of the Future). And it's up to Polly Prissypants, I mean Peter Frampton, and his buddies to get 'em back, because without the instruments, Heartland turns into Punk Central, USA. (But first they have to go to Los Angeles and become famous and meet up with Lucy and her band, The Diamonds. {sigh})
So they go to the lairs of the various people who have the various instruments, someone massacres a Beatles song, Peter Frampton gets knocked unconscious, the good guys get the instrument. Apparently all the bad guys are trying to brainwash the youth of America ("We hate love....we hate joy....we love money." What's wrong with that?) It might have been somewhat interesting, if they'd used the aforementioned brainwashed teens for more than backup dancers. What this has to do with Heartland, I don't know. The two aren't directly related - even if Heartland goes back to its shiny happy world, these guys'll still be brainwashing people.
So anyway, it all comes down to a valiant fight between Steve Tyler of Aerosmi...The Future Villain Band, and Peter Frampton. Peter, through some bizarre twist of fate, wins. Strawberry Fields, our "heroine" ("heroine" here meaning "stupid female character") falls off a platform and dies a nice blood-free death; her funeral is only slightly smaller in size and scale than John F. Kennedy's. Peter threatens to jump off the roof of Strawberry's house (I was actually yelling "Jump!" at the screen at this point), but then Billy Preston shows up and everything is restored back to its original rainbow-hearted glory. Strawberry appears out of nowhere, happily alive again. (I was thinking it would've been cool if she'd come back as a brainless, demented zombie...oh, wait, she always was one. Okay, a brainless, demented, murderous zombie.)
Why, why, why, when you have Beatles songs with legitimate women's names as titles (Michelle, Martha My Dear, Eleanor Rigby) would you name your lead female character STRAWBERRY FIELDS!??!?!?!?!? Let me take you down, indeed. If I were to make this movie....well, I wouldn't have, but at the very least I'd have named her Lucy/Michelle/whatever Fields, and nicknamed her "Strawberry".
Probably the worst part of this movie (overlooking Peter Frampton for the moment) is there is no speaking, aside from George Burns' narration. In this manner, it's similar to Evita. However, the songs in Evita were written to tell a single story. The songs used in this movie were not written to tell a single story. They weren't written to tell ANY story. Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa my head is hurting too much to finish this review. Suffice it to say that this movie would've been a lot better if, in the very first scene, one of the Germans had shot Sgt. Pepper dead. I, and millions of other people in the world, would've given him a medal.