‘Good morning ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls! Welcome to… Mmmagical Mystery Tour!‘
The Beatles were undoubtedly the most important and influential musical artist of all time. Their contribution to cinema is more modest, but still worthy of mention. A Hard Day’s Night was influential in terms of surrealistic imagery and British kitsch cinema. Help! was an example of diminishing returns but with flashes of brilliance. But Magical Mystery Tour… Well, it’s mess, isn’t it…
Ringo Starr and his auntie (Jessie Robins) embark on a magical mystery tour through the English countryside. That’s it. There is no plot or storyline here to speak of.
Rather than a linear storyline with a beginning, middle and end, Magical Mystery Tour is a series of psychedelic vignettes to promote the album of the same name. Whilst that album isn’t one of the canonical Beatles studio albums, instead featuring a number of different cuts recorded across various time periods and recording studios, it does feature some of their very best work (‘The Fool on the Hill’, ‘Your Mother Should Know’ and ‘I Am the Walrus’ all made their debut here), the film is, for want of a better word, dogshit. This project stands as a testament to what happens when Paul McCartney is given complete creative control over something (as he is here). The result is a film that was a critical flop on release, so much so that a proposed American release was shelved, and one that hasn’t been re-evaluated over time.
Magical Mystery Tour is a lazy, inconsequential film that is notable as being the only truly terrible thing The Beatles put their name to. Genuinely awful.
And yet… and yet when the Fab Four mime to ‘Your Mother Should Know’ in pristine white suits there is a glimmer of their innate genius. The Beatles will never be all bad. Not even in this shit.