Give My Regards To Broad Street is Paul McCartney's ultimate folly but, as folly goes, it's not quite up there with the sacking of Rome or the sinking of Atlantis. In fact, it's not half bad.
The music matters. McCartney's voice is on top form and he has picked and arranged a fine song-track to decorate a film which must have been scripted on the back of a plectrum. The plot is so inane and childish it doesn't warrant repeating here.
Paul's not an actor so don't expect the method but, strangely, do. The method is in the music, graceful and plaintive as ever, with a few new tracks to take the edge off the Beatles classics. No More Lonely Nights is one of his finest songs, arranged in sky-line melancholy, a London nod to Manhatten. The Silly Love Songs sequence is amusing and inventive if you get the gag - basically an opened out song playing like an opened out big-screen sit-com. And the extended Eleanor Rigby takes us briskly through a dream-sequence which formulates the 80's penchant for action aping introspection.
The supporting cast is odd - Ralph Richardson is wasted, Bryan Brown disinterested. Ringo sucks as ever. Only Linda seems to enter into the spirit of Paul's conceit, as though the script was pillow talk.
Slated at the time, the film is a must for Beatles, Wings and McCartney fans, and it's worth repeating that the man himself doesn't need to act the method, the method's in the music.
The music matters. McCartney's voice is on top form and he has picked and arranged a fine song-track to decorate a film which must have been scripted on the back of a plectrum. The plot is so inane and childish it doesn't warrant repeating here.
Paul's not an actor so don't expect the method but, strangely, do. The method is in the music, graceful and plaintive as ever, with a few new tracks to take the edge off the Beatles classics. No More Lonely Nights is one of his finest songs, arranged in sky-line melancholy, a London nod to Manhatten. The Silly Love Songs sequence is amusing and inventive if you get the gag - basically an opened out song playing like an opened out big-screen sit-com. And the extended Eleanor Rigby takes us briskly through a dream-sequence which formulates the 80's penchant for action aping introspection.
The supporting cast is odd - Ralph Richardson is wasted, Bryan Brown disinterested. Ringo sucks as ever. Only Linda seems to enter into the spirit of Paul's conceit, as though the script was pillow talk.
Slated at the time, the film is a must for Beatles, Wings and McCartney fans, and it's worth repeating that the man himself doesn't need to act the method, the method's in the music.