The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – the Touring Years – Film Review by Lisa Jewell

Director: Ron Howard

Capturing what were the peak years of Beatlemania from 1963 to 1966, this documentary presents newly unearthed footage and remastered video and audio. It’s directed by Ron Howard and produced with the cooperation of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Beatle widows Yoko Ono and Oliva Harrison. Both McCartney and Starr feature in new interviews in the film, alongside interviews with the likes of Richard Curtis, Whoopi Goldberg and Elvis Costello who tell what impact the Beatles had on them during their formative years.

The film has the tagline, ‘The band you know. The story you don’t’ but arguably the biggest challenge that this film faces is that the Beatles’ story has been so well documented over the years. There’s the Cavern Club days, the US invasion, the bigger than Jesus backlash, the screaming girls. Anyone who was around in the 60s remembers it firsthand and the kids of Baby Boomers have absorbed the history both from their parents and from pop culture. Whether Millennials are a target demographic for this film remains to be seen.

No doubt because the band’s career has been well documented, the film doesn’t set out to be the definitive history of the Beatles and focuses in on a particular part of it. Even though the Liverpool origins and the tough training ground that was Hamburg are mentioned in the film, not a lot of time is spent on them and instead, the film’s focus is on the American invasion. Equally, the film finishes at the time when The Beatles decided not to tour anymore and focused instead on recording their most musically experimental albums. It doesn’t get into the messiness of the band imploding.

The documentary benefits by not trying to pack it all in and this gives room for the concert footage to breathe. It’s also pretty pacey in its tempo. The audio of the Beatles talking that kicks off the film and is used throughout is one of the best things about the film – certainly, the banter between them in the recording studio is entertaining and endearing. The interviews with the stars such as Whoopi Goldberg and Richard Curtis are at times insightful but at other times, seem a little shoe horned in to the overall narrative of the film.

If you’re a big Beatles fan, you’ve probably already booked your tickets for this and you’ll savour every moment of the 100 minute running time. If you’re a run of the mill Beatles fan (which is basically everyone else, honestly who doesn’t like the Beatles!), it’s still worth seeing. It may be a familiar story but in the way it’s put together, it’s a story well told. I would say it’s worth waiting to see it on DVD or TV but there is one big plus to seeing it in the cinema – hearing those melodic songs blasting out in stereo in a cinema auditorium. It’s worth the entrance price for that alone.