Nowhere Boy Movie Review

Sometimes I'm lucky enough to be able to watch movies at work. It's one of the few perks and I think I deserve it after the amount of years I've put in there, as well as the fact that I'm really underpaid. This week I watched "Nowhere Boy" - an account of John Lennon's adolescence in Liverpool and his journey toward becoming a musical icon. I can't really say what my expectations were before seeing the film. I guess any interest was overshadowed by the fact that I am perplexed by the relationship between the film's star, Aaron Johnson, and the director, Sam Taylor-Wood.

Exhibit A of perplexity
Yes. He is having a child with this woman...

Anyways, I'm always interested in a good biopic and I love all things Brit, especially Aaron Johnson, so I was excited. First, it should be noted that Mr. Johnson looks nothing like John Lennon. They went out of their way to fix up his hair, shape his eyebrows, give him glasses, and a not very convincing Liverpool accent. Apparently giving him brown contacts did not seem so important, or maybe was not in the budget, but this one step could have really kept me believing it was a real story instead of a fictional one. I appreciate how the film is very contained, focusing on Lennon's relationship with his Aunt Mimi, and his developing (almost incestuous) relationship with a mother he never knew. The film does not even make mention of Lennon's first wife, Cynthia, who he met at this point in his life. I was fine with this fact until I read up on it a little bit and realized Cynthia's omission may have actually been part of an agreement with Yoko Ono who allowed the rights to use the song "Mother" in the closing credits.

Overall, I thought the film was really finely done. I liked how they introduced Paul and the impact he had on John's life from the beginning. They bonded over the absence of their mothers and channeled this connection into what is perhaps the most important musical collaboration ever known.

While Paul McCartney made some alterations to the script, he's admitted that it's not completely factual. He's has been quoted as saying “She showed me some stuff and I said, 'I like that, but that bit, we never did that, and John never did that, and he certainly didn’t do that’. So we had a discussion about ‘Yeah, well, it’s a film’. It captures the essence, but not for me. Because I was there. I hear it’s a good film. But it’s my life.”

So in the end that's what it is. It's a great story, the performances are strong, but there is a slight lack in the believability of a biopic - but maybe I'm expecting too much.

In the end I give it 3.5 Astronaut Jesus' out of 5.