SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND (1978)
SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND video artwork
PETER FRAMPTON.....Billy Shears
BARRY GIBB.....Mark Henderson
ROBIN GIBB.....Dave Henderson
MAURICE GIBB.....Bob Henderson
GEORGE BURNS.....Mr. Kite
DONALD PLEASENCE.....B.D. Brockhurst/B.D. Hoffler
STEVE MARTIN.....Dr. Maxwell Edison
Directed by MICHAEL SCHULTZ
Written by HENRY EDWARDS
Produced by ROBERT STIGWOOD
REVIEW BY JANET MASLIN
Is it a film? Is it a record album? Is it a poster, or a T-shirt, or a specially embossed frisbee? Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the ultimate multimedia mishmash, so diversified that it doesn't fully exist in any one medium at all. This isn't a movie, it's a business deal set to music.
There are three brief sequences good enough to put the rest of the picture to shame. Steve Martin, cackling his completely unhinged rendition of Maxwell's Silver Hammer, is a reminder that the film is otherwise humorless. Billy Preston, doing a flashy, rousing dance to the tune of Get Back, makes the other hoofers look sadly two-left-feet. And Aerosmith, singing a piercing rock version of Come Together, bring a taste of the 60's to a movie dead-set on both exploiting and soft-pedaling that era.
The point behind turning Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees into the Beatlesque band of the title was, presumably, to lure both young rock fans and members of the rocking chair set. But the plan has its drawbacks.
However much of a fan rave Mr. Frampton may be, he's a musician, not a movie star, and even a plot that merely requires him to look sad, peppy or joyful from time to time is more than he can manage.
In the role of Mr. Frampton's brother, Paul Nicholas, the actor who played nasty Cousin Kevin in Tommy, provides a particularly unhelpful contrast, since he is every bit as lively as the singer is stiff. Still, Mr. Frampton looks like Marlon Brando beside the even more wooden Brothers Gibb.
Even if the Bee Gees aren't natural-born cutups, their principal job here is to perform a number of Beatles songs, mostly from the title album and Abbey Road.
This sounds as if it ought to be child's play, in view of arrangements and production by George Martin (who worked with the Beatles in the first place), and considering the uncanny way the Bee Gees first rose to popularity by perfecting a Beatlish sound. However, the brothers have since risen to even greater popularity doing something different, so different that their newest fans may be dismayed to find not a whit of disco in the movie's soundtrack. And their Beatle numbers vary dramatically in quality, depending upon the nature of the particular song.
Nowhere Man suits them beautifully, for instance. But a less pretty number requiring zest and a strong lead singer---such as the title song, or With a Little Help From My Friends, both sung with Mr. Frampton---merely makes them sound short on character. The Bee Gee's special gift for elaborate musical teamwork is often undercut by songs that cry out for individual personalities. Accordingly, Robin Gibb's bluesy solo on Oh! Darling is a sweet and surprising exception.
The musical numbers are strung together so mindlessly that the movie has the feel of an interminable variety show. Characters are named, invented or introduced to one another simply to provide excuses for the various songs.
This reaches a pinnacle of idiocy when a character named Strawberry Fields (Sandy Farina) sings Strawberry Fields Forever to her beau, Billy Shears (Mr. Frampton), who has been knocked unconscious. "Living is easy with eyes closed/Misunderstanding all you see," Strawberry sings, prettily but for absolutely no good reason. Even worse, when the screenplay has Strawberry killed (temporarily) so that a few sad songs can be sung, Mr. Frampton is obliged to croon Golden Slumbers to a woman in a see-through coffin.
The movie may have been conceived in a spirit of merriment, but watching it feels like playing shuffleboard at the absolute insistence of a bossy shipboard social director. When whimsy gets to be this overbearing, it simply isn't whimsy any more.
Review © 1978 THE NEW YORK TIMES. All Rights Reserved.
Video artwork © 1990 MCA HOME VIDEO. All Rights Reserved.
Title and logo designed by Karen Rappaport
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