‘I want you to be prepared for excessive screaming, hysteria, hyperventilation, fainting, fits, seizures, spasmodic convulsions, even attempted suicides…
Before Robert Zemeckis became a Hollywood legend with the Back to the Future franchise, Forrest Gump and more, he cut his teeth with a little movie about a group of teenagers attempting to secure tickets for The Beatles‘ legendary appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. While there isn’t much here to rival his later work, Zemeckis’ screenplay (co-written with Bob Gale) still contains a lot of heart and a lot of resonance – there are clues here as to the type of filmmaker that Zemeckis would later become…
A group of teenagers led by the headstrong Pam (Nancy Allen), the dismissive Janis (Susan Newman), who actually prefers the music of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez to the Fab Four, and obsessive fanatic Rosie (Wendie Jo Sperber) travel from New Jersey to the big city to see The Beatles perform on the Ed Sullivan show. The problem is they don’t have tickets, the boys they have persuaded to come along with them are ineffectual and thousands of other screaming teenage girls are also out for tickets too. Upon arrival, Rosie meets Richard (self-styled as ‘Ringo’ and played with gusto by Eddie Deezan) who is the only person on the planet who is a bigger fan of The Beatles than Rosie herself. After splitting up, they find themselves in the same room as the band (voiced offscreen by some quite dodgy voice actors), become involved in a kiss-and-tell scandal and sell random pieces of fabric that purport to be parts of the bedsheet slept on by their idols. It’s all good fun.
I Wanna Hold Your Hand works best as a love letter to The Beatles and to fandom in general and also as a time capsule of Beatlemania. When taken on those terms, it’s hard not to get swept up in it all. I suppose for people who don’t like the band (idiots, I call them) there probably isn’t much here to get excited about but for everyone else, Zemeckis’ debut feature is a heart-warming and emotionally resonant good time.
Come for the soundtrack and stay for everything else.