Magical Mystery Tour film discussion

if your a fan of Monty Python you will realize that this was their inspiration for a lot of their stuff ! the colonel is taken from this you see it quite easily ! its a silly film with some great music and moments ! imagine if they had the CGI we have today ! it would have been a wild ride !

 

A few years back I saw it on my local PBS station. I'm as diehard a Beatles fan as anyone but gave up after about 35-40 minutes. The thing is just unwatchable.

 

Absolutely LOVE this ! No video I have seen more times than this one.

 

I bought a Blu Ray bwaaa haa haaaa

 

Any film that features The Beatles singing I Am The Walrus has to be all right in my book.

 

Yep, same story for me. We rented it, watched it and were like, "Yeah, I can see why they got slammed for this. It does suck!" Thirty years later, I still want those fifty odd minutes back!

It is a terrible piece of work, easily the biggest artistic misstep in The Beatles career and they deserved every bad review they got (even yours!). They were getting a little big for their britches by that time (I've said before I think all the praise they got for Pepper started going to their heads, McCartney's in particular, and they really did think for a time that their every musical utterance was work of genius- it wasn't) and I think it was good that they got knocked down a peg or three over MMT. The film makes no sense, it has no story, it is the incoherent mess the reviews said it was. It'd be one thing if it was actually funny, or even "silly" in a Pythonesque way (cue The Colonel), but it just isn't. I don't even think I'd enjoy it more if I were watch it while high, even Outside of "Walrus", I'm not even that big a fan of the music, for that matter. IMO Help! is a dumb movie, but it's not "bad" in the way Magical Mystery Tour is. Hell, as far as I'm concerned, for all the criticism and crucifixion McCartney got over Give My Regards To Broadstreet, even Broadstreet is better than Magical Mystery Tour.

McCartney said the same thing trying to justify Magical Mystery Tour's existence, but even that's not enough, sorry, Paul. Even in the "Walrus" sequence The Beatles manage to look ridiculous IMO. A song like "I Am The Walrus" deserved better.

 

deserved better "?
Absolute poppycock.

 

Alex, take off yer Unobjective Beatles Fanboy goggles for a minute if you can and actually consider the "I Am The Walrus" sequence. You don't think they look ridiculous? The kaftans and love beads? Lennon's shower cap? The four guys dressed like Bobbies swaying back and forth? To me that sequence exemplifies everything that's wrong with The Beatles' "Psychedelic Era". I can easily imagine George Harrison seeing that footage twenty years later and cringing, saying, "What the hell were we thinking?"

 

I first watched MMT when I got a VHS copy in the 80s, and the picture and sound quality were awful! It was blurry with distorted color, and the sound was tinny and monaural. I enjoy the psychedelic elements of the production, so I was intrigued when an official DVD was released. The restored MMT is great with much better picture and stereophonic sound on the songs. The trick to enjoying the film is not to take it seriously. rolling up indeed helps! I'll never forget how Walrus messed with my head the first time I heard it... It still does! Couple it with weird visual imagery, and then it's a real trip! It's as close to an LSD trip as I care to get. It even occasionally worms its way into my sleep-time dreams.

 

Its surreal it's a trip.
Met Ivor Cutler once brillant friendly wee man.

 

If Scorsese had made it, it would have lasted three hours, like most of his stuff does these days. As for the movie itself, 'Blue Jay Way' is one of the most miserable dirges I've ever endured. 'Please don't be long' indeed - three minutes shorter would have been nice. I quite like a few of the other sequences, but, let's be honest, it's a mess.

 

It's no Ouch!, thats for sure.

 

... another lesson.. don't roll up until you've completed a filmable script... also don't leave filmmaking chores to the most guarded member of your group (who then sees fit to namecheck Spielberg and scorcese to explain away a black hole!)

 

It's Fine.

I remember seeing it when I was six. When it finished, I remember being the only one left in the room (out of Mum, Dad, Grandma and maybe my sister but she'd have been three so probably in bed), and thinking "That was good, I look forward to next week's episode".

Think I was right - if they had been in the business of making TV shows, that would have been a useful pilot for a series. But, they weren't.

More recently, I saw the Bee Gees' equivalent, "Cucumber Castle". About as good, without the great songs.

 

Yep... MMT makes little to no sense, but it plays like my dreams! I've met scant few people who are brave enough to describe their dreams, as I reckon most would be hesitant or embarrassed to. I believe Thr Beatles knew just what they were doing, and one should keep in mind that it was the 60s! They were experimenting as many were in the day.

 

I love it to death. Helps to be in the same frame of mind that the Beatles obviously were at the time.

 

More so than the colonel, this is clearly 'borrowed' by Cleese and Co:

 

... yeah but this is no consolation because scorcese also did the Last Waltz ... mmt was my first album and I have always loved the dour dirge. loved Ringo's drums on it... love the dark organ tones... the cello ... never could figure how they got Janis Joplin to sing such subdued background though. still an underwhelming piece of music. I'm now grouping George's 67 - 68 music and organ trilogy into one album of music.... let it down... blue jay... long long long ... all too much .... love you too... northern song... inner light.. Apple scruffs... A long hard slog of recordings which would top a list of Beatles worst but I think if taken together and reimagined they could BE somebody. I also think Beatles fans should do a remake of mmt for this Christmas with the same eye!

 

man, it's almost like the majority of members here have never seen anything other than hollywood narrative film before, or something.

 

I'm in the 'or something' camp.

 

If you can't tell a shirttail from a p****......well......

 

As the vicar said to the nun.

 

I think the documentary went a long way towards providing a new perspective on the threads of the Beatles consciousness in the film... it's too bad that there wasn't more of a linkage with their Christmas records particularly that year's in 67 ... I'd love to see it reimagined with hello goodbye and Christmas time is here again and yellow submarine thrown into the mix like a giant Monty Python Peter Max mashup. they really needed Eppie!

 

They really needed Podgy The Bear And Jasper.

 

I must say though that I'm loving the 'it looks better after a roll up' arguments. I think I'll adopt that for my own life:

'That stuff you just wrote - it's ATROCIOUS!!!'

'Please calm down. I assure you that, once you have ingested a sufficient amount of drugs, it will seem, er, not too bad'.

'Really? I'll give it a go!'