Director: Sam Taylor-Wood
Year Released: 2009
Rating: 1.5
Uninspired, rather routine biopic about John Lennon's teenage years - pre-Beatles - reveals him to be a moping miscreant with Mommy Issues. The most intriguing aspect of this is how young John (a smug Aaron Johnson) seems so attached to his irresponsible, promiscuous mother (Anne-Marie Duff): the scenes with the two of them are oddly sexual, and the two share a chemistry he doesn't have with girls close to his own age (tying into this is the fact that the director, Ms. Taylor-Wood, and Johnson are presently in a relationship ... and she's over twenty years his senior). He smokes, drinks, shares pornography and is shown to have a negative influence on his peers - a real hellion, ha - while Aunt Mimi (Kristen Scott Thomas) and the Establishment cluck their tongues in disapproval. Those obsessed with John's legacy - and Paul McCartney's (shown here as being a demure, considerably better adjusted sidekick) - might find more to value in this than I ... although they might quibble with the (alleged) historical inaccuracies. As for me, I'd be considerably more drawn to a film about Mick Jagger and Keith Richards at age 15.
