Taking a brief shower thought to its priciest, most indulgent end, Yesterday asks what would happen if some freak accident left only one singer-songwriter knowing the collective works of The Beatles. The answer, of course, is that this guy (Himesh Patel) is going to himself “write” those songs. The interesting follow-up may be as to whether Beatles songs hold up outside of context in 2019, or how everyone forgetting The Beatles would also eliminate all their physical albums and ephemera—or even whether the Gallagher brothers could finally make good on their claim that they’d be bigger than the Beatles, had Oasis came first somehow.
Yet screenwriter Richard Curtis and director Danny Boyle here seem more interested in the effect hitting it big takes on a relationship—and the in-world fantasy stuff that may end up in our new, conflated Beatle being caught in his lie. Because why fully explore a conceit that’s explicitly what a movie is about?
We’ll see whether the filmmakers and Patel—with co-stars Lily James, Kate McKinnon, and Ed Sheeran—can yet make this work (honestly, Curtis sorted his high concept premise of About Time fairly well) when Yesterday hits theaters September 13.
