Purely Joyful Movie!

How sad is this?

Great Film overall

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

What makes for a good biographical epic anyway? Since watching movies is a visceral experience I'd like to think the best movies based on real events like Gandhi (1982) and Amadeus (1984) keep the spirit of the person or event intact. Small embellishments or endearing character traits can sometimes add to the story so long as they don't go overboard. Anyone remember Patch Adams (1998)? How about Men Who Stare at Goats (2009)? Two stories certainly worth telling that were dragged in the muck because of one too many tall tales.Well, I didn't think it was possible but it seems it can work the other way around too. You can have too little embellishment, too little false characterizations and too little drama. Thus was the case of the 2009's look at John Lennon's adolescents Nowhere Boy. Now anyone who knows me knows I'm a pretty big admirer of The Beatles. Not big enough to own all their albums on vinyl but big enough to actually know which album is which. You could say in comparison to others in my generation who have never actually seen them live, I'm a fan. I say all this to put my opinion of Nowhere Boy in a context. You may be a bigger fan than I and loved the film in which case bully for you. I however found it dull.John Lennon's early adolescence consisted of a broken household and a lost identity. Living with close relatives for most of his life, the young John meets his birth mother only after the death of his uncle. His aunt, of course is not a fan of them gallivanting around Liverpool when he should be doing his homework. Nor is she a fan of John starting a band with schoolmates for that matter. Things however reach their climax when John begins to put the puzzle together and confronts his mother with complex questions like "why did you leave me?" "who is my father?" and "how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?"Its all pretty heavy and if it were anyone else, the story and its resolution would have worked, but this is John f*****g Lennon! Seeing him breaking a washboard over a friends head in a drunken rage or wagging his bits at school girls make him look like a particularly maladjusted teenager not the symbol of love, peace and awesomeness I've pictured. I'm not saying he wasn't a total jerk in grade school, he likely was, but why is his broken home worth the biographic treatment? If anything it should consist of a very small part of a hero worshiping epic starring Michael Sheen and directed by James Manigold. Not the whole subject of a movie about a poor boy with an Oedipus complex starring the kid from Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (2008).

A great exploration of John Lennon's teen years, especially his relationships with his mom and aunt/guardian. The relationships are quite sensitively handled, though maybe overwrought.Also shows what shaped his personality and subsequent history. As a music fan, the events that created the Beatles and their music are particularly interesting, especially Lennon's first meeting with Paul McCartney and their subsequent friendship and collaboration. Aaron Johnson is very good as Lennon, Kristin Scott Thomas is superb as Aunt Mimi and the remaining cast are solid.Worth watching as a biopic on one of the most influential musicians in history, or purely as a human drama.

Aaron Johnson stars as the young John Lennon who is always causing trouble for riding on the roof of a bus, getting into brawls with bullies, or flashing girls in school, or missing class and never paying attention in class whenever he decided to attend class (it sounds a lot like me, actually LOL) and lives with his Aunt Mimi (the wonderful Kristin Scott Thomas in a superb supportive role here). Little did I know about his troubled childhood and I was taken aback when I saw what unraveled during Nowhere Boy: John didn't actually know his mother and grew up thinking that she was somewhere far, far away along with his father and was left to Aunt Mimi's devices to raise this rebellious yet lovable character. I love how the film star never tries to imitate or glorify John Lennon in any way, there are some acts that John does to his Aunt Mimi, his friends and even his mother during this film that made my jaw drop.Speaking of his mother Julia, in his search for her it's a friend of him (or was he his cousin, I can't quite remember) that tells John where she is, his cousin shows him that Julia is actually at walking distance from where he's always lived, a few blocks from Aunt Mimi's home. The first meeting John ever had with Julia was awkward: a sixteen year old confident boy suddenly becomes very sheepish and vulnerable in front of your very eyes, it was touching watching John melt in the sight of his real mother whom he had given up on, the thought of seeing her was beyond belief and was more than a dream come true, it was as if the boy had hit the jackpot and was suddenly in the presence of his other half, a part of him that had been ripped from him when she was out of his life for 12 years or so and suddenly he felt the urge to catch up with Julia.Julia, as it turns out, had remarried and had 2 daughters and lived her life as if she had never had a son before. Upon seeing John at her door you could tell that a dark episode in her life had returned to haunt her yet she didn't let it show to John and they began a strange and wonderful bond where they would go on dates to the movies or buying records or out and about. She also introduced him to music and her love to play music. It was Julia that awoke a part of John that was always there yet he never knew it until he met Julia.The real drama begins on John's 17th birthday when Julia decided to throw a party in his honor. The drunken teenagers playing rock'n'roll music while John was being his bad self in spite of his mother, he started to resent the fact that she pretty much abandoned him without a trace and the fact that they had lived so close all this time and never had bothered to be part of his life when he needed his mother the most. Aaron Johnson does a great job in containing all that anger and rage inside John for as long as he could in order to explode in front of the camera when he finally confronts Julia in her front yard and demands that she tells him what was the reason she abandoned him with his Aunt Mimi and never looked back.And that is probably the most heart breaking moment when, upon coming back home with his Aunt Mimi along with Julia, that he learns the awful truth that he was seeking all his life: when John was a little boy, around 5 or 6 years old, he'd watched his parents get in a huge argument that turned a bit violent and John was given a choice: You want to go with mommy or daddy? Just thinking of the scene bring chills down my spine, how can you have a young boy make such a horrible choice? What kind of parent would ever do that to their child? Having come from a broken home myself, I had to make that same hard decision but it was my own decision to go with my mother. Nobody had sat down and explained what was wrong with my family but I wasn't five years old trying to make an adult decision. To think that John had to make this hard decision at such a tender age was just too much to bear. Then we get to see how Aunt Mimi came to John's rescue when she witnessed Julia and her husband get into a heated argument and took it upon herself to get this innocent boy out of harm's way and hid him in her own home where she would raise this kid as her own. It's the ultimate sacrifice that a woman can ever make, a sacrifice of love for a young boy who has no knowledge of what's happening in front of his very eyes. John's father apparently took off to Germany to never return again while Julia came to see John at Mimi's house. That was the haunting image of Julia knocking on their door, the image that will forever be stuck in John's memory and one that will keep coming back as if it were a horrible nightmare, a troubling dream that John can never quite put together until this very moment. It's a scene so emotionally charged and performed quite well that I needed a few moment to contain my own tears, it's certainly the best scene in NOWHERE BOY.

Nowhere Boy is a biopic about John Lennon's adolescence, his relationships with his guardian aunt and his birth mother, the creation of his first band, The Quarrymen, and its evolution into The Beatles. It stars Aaron Johnson as the young Lennon together with Thomas Sangster,Anne-Marie Duff and Kristin Scott Thomas.The film is based on a biography written by Lennon's half-sister Julia Baird.Young John is a bright but sharp-tongued boy living in the coastal town of Liverpool during the 1950s with his aunt Mimi and uncle George.John's father walked out on the family when he was four years old, and the boy was given to Mimi to raise, even though his mother, Julia, was still alive. While Mimi's straight-laced nature runs counter to John's more reckless personality, they clearly love one another and the household is thrown into chaos when George dies suddenly. At the funeral, teenage John sees Julia, and learns to his surprise that she lives only a few blocks away from Mimi. John pays her a visit, and Julia gratefully welcomes him back into her life. Julia's personality is a much closer fit to John than Mimi, and she encourages his love for writing and music, teaching him to play the banjo. However, John's renewed relationship with Julia brings up a number of unanswered questions, and causes new tensions between Mimi and John. And as rock & roll becomes the hot new sound of the day, John falls in love with the bold new music and makes a friend who is interested in forming a band, Paul McCartney and George Harrison.If you've seen read or seen the Beatles history in literature or film, you'll adore Nowhere Boy for filling in more blank spaces about the early life particularly that of John Lennon.This biopic succeeds because its creators never wallow in admiration.Also,they keep contrivances to a minimum and has a lead actor in Aaron Johnson who manages to evolve his character rather than imitate the person he is portraying.He was simply restrained and has a low-key approach in his performance.Overall,expect new insights about the young Lennon in this film.