Pepper attire and use the title song to drive away the baddies who have turned Pepperland into such a drab place. It’s, of course, hard not to smile as the animated Fabs don the familiar Sgt. The songs play like mini-music videos, either literally depicting lyrical images or reflecting a song’s themes in a trippy, hallucinogenic manner! The orchestral climax to “A Day in the Life” cleverly accompanies the journey from England to the eponymous sub that will take the Beatles to Pepperland while “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” is illustrated with cultural iconography and phrases filling giant heads! The sequence of an endless “sea of holes” (“enough to fill the Albert Hall,” natch) still impresses. The Beatles supplied just a handful of new songs to supplement selections from their existing catalogue. The center of any Beatles film, of course, is the music. How does the 2012 edition stack up to the 1999 release? Hit the jump for that, and much more! And of course the movie embraces peace and love, emphasizing good over evil as well as brotherhood in its finale, even where Blue Meanies are concerned! The live Beatles even make a brief appearance at the film’s conclusion, leading a sing-along of “All Together Now.” In contrast with their animated counterparts, only Ringo is mustachioed in the live footage! The Beatles fly on giant birds, and encounter creatures of every shape and size. For the younger set, there are kooky, amusing new characters like the Nowhere Man himself. The older crowd must have delighted at the Goons-esque turns of phrase, the references to Guy Lombardo and The Sound of Music, and the sly asides (Ringo’s “It’s my policy never to read my reviews”). There’s plenty for both adults and children. Nothing is sacred in the Yellow Submarine world at one point, the entire film image is literally “sucked up” by a fantastic creature, perhaps with a tip of the hat to the pioneering work of Chuck Jones in cartoons like “Duck Amuck.” The animation most resembles a living collage, taking in live-action footage, stills and special effects for a unique look and feel. John Clive (John), Geoffrey Hughes (Paul), Peter Batten (George) and Paul Angelis (Ringo) all vocally capture their respective Beatles, and the real group is, of course, heard in the musical sequences. It’s a wonder that the characters are so well-defined, because the film is rather slow and lacking in a conventional plot sense. All four Beatles are surprisingly well-delineated with their familiar personas, especially sad-sack everyman Ringo. Though the animation didn't attempt to compete with the more lush offerings of the Disney studio, the film compensated with its unbridled imagination and off-kilter humor, something it shared with the “limited animation” pioneered by studios such as UPA. Everything comes to life in Pepperland even comic book-style explosions are rendered visually. The visual style of art director Heinz Edelmann is established early on, with Pepperland populated by colorful trees, giant free-standing hands, and words like “LOVE” as three-dimensional sculptures. The film, written by Brodax, Lee Minoff, Jack Mendelsohn and Erich Segal, centered on the “unearthly paradise of Pepperland,” a world where “nothing is real.” The central conflict was set up directly and simply enough for kids to understand: the evil Blue Meanies wish for the multi-colored Pepperland to “go blue.” (Was it intentional that some of the Blue Meanies wore Mickey-esque mouse ears?) Could The Beatles save the day with the powers of peace, love and music? It was ready-made not only for children, but for a counterculture that would soon adopt Walt Disney’s ahead-of-its-time Fantasia as a psychedelic experience. Although the television show and the film shared the same producer (Al Brodax) and director (George Dunning), the big-screen project was far more ambitious on a stylistic level. When Yellow Submarine arrived in cinemas, it wasn’t the first animated evocation of the Fab Four, having been preceded by a Saturday morning program on the ABC network which ran from 1965-1967. Out of print for some time on DVD, Yellow Submarine has just returned to DVD and Blu-Ray (5099962146098) in a painstakingly restored new edition from Apple Corps and EMI/Capitol. The result might be something like the 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine. Now, picture the evocative imagery of The Beatles’ most mind-bending lyrics transferred to a silver screen world where imagination and wonder run rampant. Picture yourself in a boat on a river…with tangerine trees and marmalade skies…
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