Phil Waitley

I cannot believe all the sour reviews and snide comments about this movie. It was as entertaining and sweet a two hours as I have ever spent in a movie theater. It's called fantasy. It wasn't a documentary. Holes in the plot? The biggest hole in it was that it implied that the Fab Four were singularly gifted and did not draw on an enormous reservoir of American influences, from a brigade of early African American blues artists such as Ma Rainey (Gertrude Pridgett, “The mother of the Blues,”) Son House, Robert Johnson, Huddie Ledbetter (Ledbelly), Blind Lemon Jefferson, and later blues singers like Bessie Smith, Woody Guthrie, evolving up through performers such as Chuck Berry, Roy Orbison, Link Wray and Duane Eddy and their twangy guitars, gifted harmonizers like the Everly Brothers, and the only Nobel Laureate in literature in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. To quote that laureate, “Businessmen they drink my wine, “Plowmen dig my earth, “None of them along the line, “Know what any of it is worth.” Doctor Zhivago it ain’t. But it was fun. And I hope this doesn’t spoil it for anyone, but it had a syrupy, happy ending. As McCartney asked about silly love songs, “What’s wrong with that?” Thanks to everyone who was involved in this convivial confection.