1015. A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

Starring: Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr

Director: Richard Lester

Running Time: 87 mins

A Hard Day’s Night is a British film about a day in the life of the pop sensation The Beatles, full of screaming girls, sticking it to the man, singing songs, and causing mischief.

This is a crazy off-the-chain sort of teen comedy, with silly humour abound and zany characters throughout. It’s a must-see for Beatles fans, with a sort of look into their lives, as well as a collection of the songs from the album A Hard Day’s Night, however as a film, you have to admit that it’s not particularly impressive, funny or interesting.

The main idea is that it’s a tongue-in-cheek look at the band’s hectic lifestyle at its most popular, and that is a much more fun idea than a dull documentation about their world, such as is the case with modern band films like One Direction: This Is Us.

Of course, One Direction don’t come within miles of The Beatles, but it has to be said that the presentation of the band’s life as an almost surrealist comedy isn’t as interesting as it could have been, and appears as a more fun story for people who just want to see their favourite band on screen, and not learn something new about them.

The comedy here is also a little strange. Each of the band members plays an exaggerated version of themselves, which makes for some more fun than in reality, whilst they are surrounded by a host of weird characters, such as Paul McCartney’s ‘granddad’, one of the creepiest and silliest people you’ll ever see on screen.

And on the one hand, the humour is all about the band making mischief, disobeying authority and being free-loving young people, which was their main appeal in the early 1960s, and that’s fun to some extent (although it is a little repetitive), but on the other hand, it’s an almost surreal comedy, where nothing makes sense, the story is as loose and meandering as anything, and it all seems to be a bit of a mess.

Now, that free-flowing feel to the story is potentially deliberate, however it does make for sometimes irritating viewing for people who want a story about the Beatles’ lives, not just various sequences of them messing around.

Overall, then, I’ll give this a 6.4, because despite its huge appeal to big Beatles fans who want to see their favourite musicians on screen, as a proper film, this isn’t particularly funny, interesting or easy to watch at all.