DailyView: Day 211, Movie 297

I am preparing to watch the first installment of the new Beatles documentary from Peter Jackson on Disney +, Beatles: Get Back. It looks to be an epic doc, with the first installment clocking in at over 2 and a half hours. I am saving that for after lunch today, so to prep for the show, I looked for something Beatles for the DailyView today. Time wise, Across the Universe did not fit (maybe tonight), but I found another documentary on Amazon Prime called The Beatles: Up Close and Personal that fit much better into the schedule.

Sadly, I did not enjoy this documentary very much.

Make no mistake, there are some great uses of the Beatles’ classic music. That was easily the best part of the doc.

However, the rest of the doc just felt like it was stories that were being told by the hangers-on.

Pete Best, one of the original drummers with the Beatles before being replaced with Ringo Starr, did a lot of the heavy lifting on the storytelling, and his constant reference to him being a Beatle felt wrong. He used a lot of “we” and “us” in the tales, and the doc does not seem to realize that Pete Best was not in any of the clips of the Beatles playing because he was out of the band by then.

The most interesting part of the doc was retelling about when Pete Best was released from the Beatles.

This felt like a group of people desperately trying to cash in on the success of the Beatles. It is reportedly unauthorized. I sure hope Get Back is better than this one.