Yellow Submarine Yellow Submarine (Air Date: Week Of 11/29/95)
With all the hoopla involving that Beatles documentary on television, I found myself looking for some "Beatle" type thing to do. I considered listening to that "Sgt. Pepper" album for yet another time, but instead, I decided to watch one of the coolest animated movies of all time, "Yellow Submarine". If you haven't seen this movie yet, and if you're a fan of at least some of the Beatles music, then by all means check out "Yellow Submarine", because it contains some of the most memorable sequences involving the Beatles.
The storyline is pretty basic, and yet very imaginative. In Pepperland, the evil Blue Meanies have overrun the music lovers who live there, and the captain of the Yellow Submarine journeys to Liverpool to find help. He finds the always accomodating Beatles, and they all take off on a psychedelic journey to Pepperland. Along the way, the lads encounter all sorts of cool sixties type stuff that takes the form of montages and explosions of color that seem to jump off the screen, eliciting a zoned out, "Wowwww!" from the viewer.
Yes, the abysmal acting and storylines of stuff like "Magical Mystery Tour" and "Help" are abandoned here, as the loosely connected plot is glued together by terrific animated versions of songs like, "When I'm Sixty-Four", "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds", "Nowhere Man" and that mantra of all sixties mantras, "All You Need is Love". By the time you sit through all of it, you begin to realize, "You know, man, it's true. All you really need is love. Love filled with flowers growing so incredibly high, and with tangerine trees and marmalade skies." Jeez, what were these guys on?
Well, the movie is pretty darn cool, anyway. "Yellow Submarine" is rare in that it manages to entertain both the young and the old. I should know: I first saw it when I was a little kid, and I turned out okay. I guess. Didn't I?
Copyright 1995 John A. Lavin