Young dockworker Jude (Jim Sturgess) leaves Liverpool for the USA searching for his G.I. father. Along the way he holes up in New York, makes a new best friend in Max Carrigan (Joe Anderson) and starts romancing the man’s younger sister Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood). As the turbulent 1960’s swirl around them all, they and their friends learn the only thing you really need to get by in life is love.

CRITIQUE

I thought Julie Taymor’s Across the Univese was a rapturously infuriating mess the first time I saw it back in September. I still hold to that response, just not quite as strongly as I did four-plus months ago. This Beatles-inspired musical may not hold together and it may feature a plot thinner then a single strand of hair, but it certainly a one-of-a-kind effort full of imagination and imagery impossible to forget.

All of which makes it absolutely perfect for home viewing. Sitting on my couch I was able to overlook the disastrous moments (every time the “Let it Be” montage begins I can’t help but cringe, while all that weird underwater stuff in the middle keeps making me scratch my head no matter how many times I try to figure it out) and revel in the scenes that soar. The film is an unabashed triumph of cinematography and production design, all of it held together by a cadre of (mostly) unknown stars who deserve bigger and brighter things in the (hopefully) very near future.

What I truly love here is the startlingly effecting chemistry dripping into every frame between Sturgess and Wood. They are simply wonderful together, and as much as I borderline detested the heavy-handed and overly familiar anti-war messages filtering through much of the melodrama no matter how silly or how cliché this pair’s romance got I still found myself rapturously rooting for them.

Don’t get me wrong. The stuff that doesn’t work, which includes one entire character, Prudence (admittedly energetically portrayed by newcomer T.V. Carpio), who wanders around for no apparent reason other to show up at one point as a roller-skating horse, really doesn’t work, and no amount of glossing over the fact is going to change it. This film is a totally idiosyncratic puzzler, and by the time I watched it for the third time I still couldn’t quite figure out what the heck Taymor was hoping to achieve.

But that’s the thing, I’ve now watched this film four times and I keep finding myself drawn back to the darn thing. The director manages to evoke the spirit of the Fab Four even if she can’t quite do the same (save for superficially) with the 1960’s. This is a music lover’s of the band’s classically timeless music will find themselves drawn to almost as by some magnetic magician’s slowly enveloping hand. Like the best pop music the film is enchanting, and even when I was snickering at just how silly it was I was still humming away the familiar lyrics of the songs and dreaming of a world where Jude and Lucy really good start a revolution and spend the rest of their lives living in a sky of diamonds.

THE VIDEO

Without question, Across the Universe is the best looking high definition DVD I have ever seen bar none. The images in this film popped right out of my television, and I was almost flabbergasted at just how crystal clear the image really was. Presented in 1080p 2.40:1 widescreen, this transfer is as close to perfect as there probably is, and no matter how much I’ll argue that the death of HD DVD was premature and wrong, this Blu-ray release goes one heck of a long way to proving me wrong.

THE AUDIO

Available audio tracks include both English Dolby TrueHD 5.1, Portuguese Dolby 5.1 and French Dolby 5.1 with optional English, English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Thai and Chinese subtitles.

THE EXTRAS

There are a bunch of extras on this disc, and for a movie musical as imaginative and as different as this one you sure as heck hope that there would be. One problem: overall they’re just not very good.

Okay, so maybe that’s a little unfair. The thing is, of the five featurettes presented here only two, “Creating the Universe” and “Stars of Tomorrow,” are really worth watching. (And, when I say worth watching I mean it. These are the types of short making-of documentaries we need more of, each far more insightful and fun to watch then you’d even remotely expect.) The other three, “All About the Music,” “FX on the Universe” and “Moving Across the Universe,” aren’t near as interesting, just skimming the surface of their potential and instead delivering pointless information I could have cared less about.

And it doesn’t get better from there. The deleted scene with the dynamic Dana Fuchs and the sensation Martin Luther McCoy goes nowhere, while the commentary track from director Taymor and composer (and musical arranger) Elliot Goldenthal is absolutely worthless on just about every level there is. They spend tons of time talking about nothing, and when they’re not doing that then they’re so absolutely silent I almost forgot I was listening to a commentary. To say this extra is disappointing doesn’t even begin to cover it.

The one special feature that really is worth the time to explore is the ability to watch eight of the musical numbers in an extended format. This is what this disc needs more of, each of these moments coming alive to an even greater (and richer) extent then they did within the film itself. A couple of them I’ve watched multiple times, Sturgess, Wood and especially Fuchs so good at bringing their songs to life I’d love to see them put out an album of their own original material.

Exclusive to the Blu-ray release is a Don Nace art gallery featuring drawings of the film. It’s not a great extra, true, but the man’s work is undeniably gorgeous. I definitely have to give him that.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The movie is flawed, yes, but it is also electrically dynamic and sticks with you for days on end. It’s also the best looking high def release I’ve ever seen, so much so Blu-ray and PS3 owners are going to find themselves absolutely astonished at just how crystal clear the film really looks. Otherwise Beatles fans and die-hard musical romantics just have to pick this one up, while all others won’t gently weep a single tear if they sail into the rental aisle and take Across the Universe for a ride.