Yellow Submarine

 

The Beatles were not directly involved in the production of Yellow Submarine (1968); producer Al Brodax was also responsible for the not-very-good Beatles cartoon series, and they were not expecting anything good.  On the other hand, it was an easy way to complete their three movie deal with United Artists, so contracts were signed, likenesses were lent, and the movie went ahead, with the Beatles contributing a short live action cameo at the very end of the movie after discovering that it was actually good.

The movie begins with Pepperland, an unearthly paradise beneath the waves.  (It's basically Oz with a slight nautical theme.)  Everything is perfect and tranquil and the Pepperlanders enjoy their eternal garden party . . . until the Blue meanies attack!  The Chief Blue Meanie (Paul Angelis) deploys his highly specialized but very blue armies to attack Pepperland, while the Dreadful Flying Glove soars overhead to point at and pound anyone trying to escape.  Only Young Fred (Lance Percival) manages to escape, sailing the flying Yellow Submarine to the far off land of Liverpool.

Liverpool can be a lonely place in a Saturday night, and Ringo (also Paul Angelis) is feeling gloomy, complaining that "nothing ever happens to me."  (Which is silly - there was the time he was targeted by an evil cult because of a ring he got in the mail, and the time that Paul's other grandfather convinced him to run away from a TV studio.  Everything happens to Ringo.  He can't even take a bus trip with his aunt without four or five magicians causing trouble.)  Ringo cheers up a bit when he realizes that he's being stalked through the streets of Liverpool by a flying submarine.

 Ringo flees to "The Pier", a mansion with a TARDIS-like disregard for consistent dimensions which he shares with John (John Clive), Paul (Geoffrey Hughes) and George (Peter Batten and, once again, Paul Angelis.  It's complicated.)  Young Fred explains about the Blue Meanies, and the band sets off to save Pepperland.

They don't get there immediately, of course.  First they have surreal misadventures in the Sea of Time and Sea of Science, have to rescue Ringo from the Sea of Monsters, and meet the enigmatic Nowhere man, Jeremy Hillary Boob, Ph.D. (Dick Emery.)  Jeremy repairs the submarine's broken propeller, causing it to fly away with Young Fred, then as the group explore the Sea of Holes he's kidnapped by a Blue Meanie, so the band have to make their own way through the foothills of the headlands to reach Pepperland.

And of course they do.  They rescue the Mayor (Dick Emery) and are reunited with Young Fred, who delivers vital exposition and points out that the Beatles look exactly like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band; if they can just find some instruments they should be able to rally the people and overthrow the music-hating Meanies, and that's kind of what happens?  There's a happy ending, anyway.

 Yellow Submarine has the same surreal sense of humor as the other Beatles movies, though because it's animated rather than live action it's able to be even more surreal.  Like the other movies it also has a surprisingly complicated script full of puns and references.  Paying attention is rewarding.

The movie also has a tremendous sense of visual style, thanks largely to art director Heinz Edelmann.   It's a movie that doesn't really look like anything else, though there are other projects that try to look like Yellow Submarine.  The soundtrack is less unique (there are other Beatles movies, after all) but still magnificent.

And to top it all off, it's a rollicking fantasy adventure.  The plot is honestly a little thin, but the early string of song-driven  incidents means that it's structured very much like one of the Oz books, with Ringo as Dorothy Gale.  The group wander from one oddity to another before stumbling back into the plot, and the whole endeavor is focused on character and tone rather than incident.  

 A Hard Day's Night is probably a better movie, but Yellow Submarine is better than it had any right to be, a perfect piece of cinematic serendipity that is defiantly itself.