How sad is this?

Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

We loved this movie. A real pleasure to watch. Before seeing this movie we had no idea about the background of any of the Beatles. This was educational as well as entertaining. As children of that era it brought back so many memories. Overall the acting was pretty good from all the characters and the production took us back to that time. We will be watching this movie over and over again.

maybe, this is its basic good point. to give a story - mix of humor, sadness, drama of a young man looking for the right form of family, discovering music as answer. the second virtue - the atmosphere. that does it a film about more than John Lennon but about a time, the birth of a new era and the furies, fun and self definition of a teenager. but, maybe, more important, the performances of Kristin Scott Thomas and Thomas Brodie Sangster are the best ingredients of a story who has an only sin - the less courage to propose more than a familiar drama but a sensitive portrait of a young Lennon. a slice of life. this is the best definition of it. not remarkable . but nice.

I finally got around to seeing this John Lennon Biopic. The beginning gave me hope this would be a high quality accurate film, however it soon lapsed into what I feared it would become: an overdramatized and over the top take on John's relationship with Aunt Mimi and mother Julia. The film promoters promoted this as the ONLY film EVER to depict John's childhood and the formation of the Beatles...I beg to differ. As a Beatles' buff I've seen MANY other biopics, most of them hit and miss like this one. I think the first part of the film was well done, and accurate in depicting John's homelife, and how he got exposed to Elvis, rock, Paul and George. My big qualm again is how they wrote in the fictional dialogue based only loosely on the facts of John's family life. The dialogue soon lapsed into overblown unbelievable high drama, when we know John was MUCH less confrontational than that. So all that garbage with him confronting Julia and Mimi is obviously total fiction (with a few true facts thrown in for good measure). It's unfortunate that they took that low road, since this had the potential to be a quintessential John Biopic, and many aspects WERE authentic, including wardrobe, location, and music. But they chose to make it into a soap-opera-ish version that John himself would have scoffed at. Overall worth seeing, but only if you skip over the high drama segments.Finally passing grades on the acting, however most of he characters don't really remind one of the actual people; i.e. if you didn't KNOW they were supposed to be who they were you wouldn't be able to easily guess.

Being a massive Beatles fan probably made me appreciate and enjoy this film a lot more than others who aren't fans of The Beatles. Following John Lennon's teenage years, his relationship with his aunt Mimi who raised him from a small child and his relationship with real mother who enters his life at a very important stage of his teenage years, this film is just absolutely amazing! Aaron Taylor-Johnson portrays John Lennon brilliantly and I personally think, makes the film. Nothing else really needs to be Said, apart from watch it! Beatles fan or not this heart warming comedy set in the great 50's is just a brilliant film which will defiantly put a big smile on your face, no matter what your music taste is!