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Yellow Submarine (1968): 8/10

Poster (c) United Artists

In films, there’s weird with a purpose (like David Lynch films), and then there’s weird for weirdness’ sake, as is the case in Yellow Submarine, based on The Beatles’ hit song. Much like the odd quality of Monty Python’s animation, the animation here is all completely quirky. Some things move, some don’t, and some objects have things that they shouldn’t have. It’s all very hard to explain, but it can be compared to Monty Python by its pure comic irreverence.

The silly plot has the magical land of Pepperland, where music is enjoyed by all and everything is groovy, being overtaken by the music-hating Blue Meanies. Young Fred (Lance Percival) is sent in a yellow submarine to find help. He finds John, Paul, George, and Ringo (who are not voiced by themselves), who accompany him throughout various seas and the entire world to get back down to Pepperland. Along the way, odd things happen, puns are thrown around, and they meet a Nowhere Man named Jeremy Hilary Boob, Ph.D (Dick Emery) who knows everything.

As I refer back to David Lynch, there’s a difference between enjoyable weird and just plain scary weird. While Lynch is scary weird, Yellow Submarine is just pure fun. There’s no real story, everything that happens is really random, and it couldn’t really be any better. The animation I found to be quite ahead of its time. The animation was so zany, so…odd, that it’s memorable.

The whole movie had a real tongue-in-cheek feel to it. There are multiple puns, and much of the movie seems to be a parody. For instance, like many spy films, the yellow submarine has everything, and I mean everything, built into it. Of course, it’s hard to take any movie where the bad guys are called Blue Meanies seriously, but that’s a moot point.

The music is just a big compiled bunch of The Beatles’ hit songs, and many of them, such as “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, are just filler and don’t really add anything else to it. I’m not a huge Beatles fan, but I know some of their songs, and I think about half of them were new to me. Sometimes they helped the movie, but oftentimes they just hindered. Not to say that they weren’t enjoyable, but they were pretty worthless. Overall, if watching an animated movie that was obviously made while people were on drugs, then Yellow Submarine is your best bet.

Rated G.

Review Date: December 6, 2003