Customer Reviews

The Beatles: The Magical Mystery Tour

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Magical Mystery Tour is a classic pyschedelic film from the sixties. The music is fantastic and the story is fun. Hey, it's the Beatles. (As Paul says, it's the only place you see 'I am the Walrus') It's a must for any Beatles fan... but, the video quality of this Avenue One edition is awful. I recently watched an earlier 1997 MPI edition of the dvd and was disappointed with the picture, so I thought I would try the Avenue One version. I was even more disappointed - the picture quality was much worse. If you're looking for Magical Mystery Tour I strongly recommend trying to find the MPI-issued dvd.

ce dvd des beatles est introuvable,à moins de payer un prix exorbitant.et bien,à ma grande joie,je l`ai acheté sans toutefois qu`il me coute les yeux de la tete.

The synopsis says it all. To film and show the results, no matter how bizarre or boring. Well, you get a bit of both BUT it is the Beatles and it's great to see them under any circumstances and the music, it goes without saying, is great, including the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band's Death Cab for Cutie. It also features Mal Evans, Victor Spinetti and Ivor Cutler. Proved the Beatles were only human after all. Well below the quality of A Hard Day's Night and Help! and as far as cinema verité goes it doesn't touch Let It Be but no self-respecting Beatle fan can be without this. Considering it was made for British TV in 1967, picture quality and sound are OK. Having seen how great everything looked on the Anthlogy DVD's and keeping in mind what they can do with old film these days(e.g. the James Bond reissues)I'm really looking forward to seeing this, Help! and Let It Be get the proper treatment they deserve. SOON!

Very little plot (if any) But who cares, it's the Beatles after all. For the true Beatles fanatic like myself it's always great to see them in any kind of a film.

It was a disappointing buy. The video was bad quality(BBC TV), the sound sucked. It was a necessary buy though, as I was adding to my collection.

I have been a huge Beatles fan for over 40 years. I bought the newly released (09/09/09) boxed set CDs and have all of their other movies. I had never seen this one and have been searching for it for many years. I happened upon it at Amazon and was elated. However, when I watched it I was very disappointed. It has no plot whatsoever, just a bunch of random strange videos. Even at only $10.00 it is not worth the money.

Although the picture and sound quality of this DVD are pretty abysmal, you might as well get this version, since it's fairly cheap and is the only way you're going to see this controversial Beatles fim (other than in chopped-up YouTube segments).

All the hype over the new remastered versions of the Beatles' canon, along with the Rockband version of the songs, seems to ignore aspects of the Beatles' career that the powers that be would like us to forget--namely, both "Magical Mystery Tour" and the film of "Let It Be" (which was slated for re-release on DVD at one point, but was shelved indefinitely because it was deemed to be bad for their image). I suspect "Magical Mystery Tour" is being ignored by Apple because it was the band's first major creative misstep. In fact, some people still regard MMT as the worst thing the band itself ever did (not counting the John and Yoko avant-garde albums of 1968-69, George's "Wonderwall Music" and "Electronic Sound," or Ringo's first solo effort). This is a shame, since the film itself, though seriously flawed, does bear viewing, and might be a little more palatable if the quality of the DVD print were better. This version has the feel of a DVD made from an old VHS tape, which in turn was itself made from a scratchy print, not the original negative (or even taped off the TV, bootleg-style!). Sure, there is no plot to speak of, but the separate sketches, while often utterly baffling (you have to watch the "Sgt Spinetti" sequence a couple of times to get the gist of it), also display weirdly Pythonesque qualities (John looks and sounds like Eric Idle both in his ticket-seller and his magician roles), and--occasionally--reveal flashes of brilliance. Besides, there are the songs, two of which ("Fool on the Hill" and "I Am the Walrus") are undisputed classics, and the rest are listenable and enjoyable ("Your Mother Should Know" arguably works better with the 1940s-style choreography that Paul (I'm guessing) devised for it in the film).

One more thing I haven't seen discussed: the photograph-and-synopsis book that was included with the original double-EP (and US LP) version of MMT offers a radically different version of the film than what was actually shown. Sequences are rearranged, often with far less logic than what the synopsis implies. In the film, a scene involving lunch and a dream sequence with Happy Nat are totally missing; on the other hand, the synopsis makes no mention of the Jessie/Mr Bloodvessel subplot which is actually one of the film's...um...highlights. Even odder, the album package has the little girl, Nichola, who sits with John on the bus, say "No, you're not!" to his line, "I am the walrus"--tho' this is nowhere in the film, either (it seemed important enough to include her line not only in the synopsis, but also in a handwritten note underneath the song's title in the album's list of contents). My guess is that the album package was prepared while the film was being edited, since the US album was released on November 27 (the UK EP came out December 8), and editing work wasn't completed until the beginning of December. Could the album's synopsis represent a rough cut that was, perhaps, too long for TV, but closer to what the Beatles might have decided was the best version? In all honesty, the synopsis seems a bit more coherent, and probably would make a better film. We know that the 10 hours of footage shot for MMT have survived--it might be interesting, some day, to see an extended version of MMT as it might have been determined while the album package was being prepared. The 55-minute TV version is a chaotic mess; who knows what some restoration and re-editing might not achieve?

This film and the accompanying soundtrack boasts the worst work that the Fab Four ever produced. The horrible sound, vaccuous, drug-induced lyrical crud and lack of real musicality signals this vomit as possibly rivalling the Bee Gees Sgt. Pepper's film as the worst rock film of all time. At times dressed in plushy outfits and filmed in the oh-so-blah countryside on oh-so-blah grey days, the four Beatles indulge themselves in being the cutesy and oh-so-witty(because we WROTE it that way) boy-band of their era. The result is the same as with every film that vainly tries to promote a band that is uninspired: a trash heap. The songs stand as simply the least well-performed and least interesting of all of the Beatles' repertoire. "Fool on the Hill" is a drab, lack-lustre experiment with pseudo-melancholic tonal structure and forced psychedelic-cool nonsense lyrics.

It's just not entertaining, nor is it featuring any truly strong songs.

The reliance on Brit terms ("Roll Up") gets as boring as listening to another treatise on Brittania's rightful role. Lennon strings some poorly-conceived chord exchanges in a drab production of his (famous?) "I Am The Walrus." "Strawberry Fields" has no reference visually in this trash film.

No script, no thought, no concept... this film pales in comparison to the other films by this most-important group. I recommend "A Hard Day's Night" or even "Help!" before wasting your time getting this trainwreck.

Roll up... more like plug up... your nose.

this DVD is a must see...if you are a beatles fan you will fall over when you see this!
Paul McCartney & George Harrison rocked my world!
ENJOY!!