Welcome to The Morning After, where I share with you what I’ve seen over the past week either in film or television. On the film side, if I have written a full length review already, I will post a link to that review. Otherwise, I’ll give a brief snippet of my thoughts on the film with a full review to follow at some point later. For television shows, seasons and what not, I’ll post individual comments here about each of them as I see fit.

So, here is what I watched this past week:

A Hard Day’s Night

As part of the Feed the Queue program, I often have to pick up titles that I never would have had an interest in to start, but frequently, that disinterest fades with a viewing of the film. That’s how I approached A Hard Day’s Night, the classic Beatles mockumentary that follows John, Paul, George and Ringo along with their manager, assistant and Paul’s grandfather as they traverse London while preparing to shoot a television program.

My disinterest lies in the fact that I seem to be one of a few that don’t particularly care for The Beatles. Sure, I recognize their significance and importance to musical history, but their music just isn’t my style. I’ve found a couple of songs of theirs I don’t mind, but mostly it was later efforts or post-Beatles tunes. A few years ago, I received a screener for Across the Universe it was another title I wasn’t paying attention to simply because of its heavy reliance on Beatles music. I watched it and was surprised that I enjoyed it a great deal. Before Glee, Across the Universe took several Beatles songs and changed the orchestrations, put them in the hands of other singers, and turned them into a fascinating anti-war musical.

I gained an appreciation for other Beatles songs there, but still not in their original forms. So, A Hard Day’s Night was going to be rough for me. Here were the original recordings set to a mockumentary feature and I was beginning to dread popping it into the DVD player. Once again, I was surprised at my enjoyment of the film. When it wasn’t focusing on the music of the Beatles and instead looking at their humorous interactions with those around them including fans, their manager and random strangers, it was quite fun. The Fab Four had a surprising talent for comedy, making the movie clip by at a terrific pace (I was an hour into the film before I realized it had been that long). Of course, the over-reliance on their popular songs made several segments rather frustrating, but overall it was a positive experience. That I grew up on The Monkees on Nick at Nite helped acclimate me to the style of the film. I now recognize why and how A Hard Day’s Night brought about that incredibly fun show I watched when I was a kid.