Yesterday: Got to get it into our lives!

Yesterday (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for fleeting profanity and mildly suggestive content
By Derrick Bang

Richard Curtis isn’t just wildly imaginative; he writes the sharpest flirty and snarky dialog going these days.

Having agreed to meet hyper-aggressive Hollywood agent Debra Hammer (Kate
McKinnon), Jack (Himesh Patel) is overwhelmed by the ambitious plans that she has for
a career he hasn't yet realized is within his grasp.

He’s one of very few modern film scripters who understands precisely how to replicate the rat-a-tat banter that characterized classic Hollywood romantic comedies of the late 1930s and ’40s, while also acknowledging modern touches. He has an uncanny ear for the boisterous chatter of a group dynamic, and — most crucially — he shapes even the most minor throwaway characters with equal care.

Nobody is superfluous in a Curtis screenplay; everybody has a significant part to play. Compare this to what we get from far too many of today’s lazy scripters, who focus exclusively on a given film’s stars, leaving the supporting players hanging uselessly, like clothes on a closet rack.

I hope Great Britain appreciates Curtis as a treasure — much like Hollywood’s Aaron Sorkin — because he certainly deserves such recognition.

(I also find it quite droll that one of Curtis’ most celebrated earlier assignments — given his flair for cunning discourse — was concocting escapades for Rowan Atkinson’s essentially mute Mr. Bean.)

Partnered with the equally astute Danny Boyle in the director’s chair, Curtis and co-writer Jack Barth have spun a truly delectable fantasy out of the irresistible premise that fuels Yesterday:

What if you woke up one morning, and discovered you were the only person on Earth who remembered The Beatles, and their superlative catalog of songs?

What would you do?

But that comes a bit later. Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) is introduced as a struggling singer/songwriter in the tiny seaside town of Suffolk: a guy whose enthusiasm and guitar chops can’t quite compensate for mediocre lyrics and an uninspiring, working-class image. He’s just about ready to give it up, despite the fierce devotion and support of childhood best friend and de facto manager Ellie Appleton (Lily James).

Ellie also has been carrying a one-sided torch for 20 years, a blindingly obvious detail that has eluded Jack for the same period. (The notion that anybody could fail to recognize such affection from somebody who looks like Lily James stretches credibility, but we must roll with it.)

Patel and James are quite endearing together. He’s note-perfect as the eternally clueless and self-absorbed guy; she’s charming and effervescent as the devoted gal who patiently waits and hopes. The romantic tension is sweet, their banter subtly flirtatious. Patel gives Jack an aw-shucks, hangdog demeanor that also makes him an easy target for his gently critical parents (Meera Syal and Sanjeev Bhaskar, both a hoot). 

When she isn’t serving as Jack’s roadie, Ellie spends her days as a schoolteacher; James gives her the bubbly enthusiasm of a dedicated instructor who instinctively know how to reach her students. (We all should be so lucky.)

Jack also gains modest encouragement from their cluster of friends: Carol (Sophia Di Martino), Lucy (Ellise Chappell), Nick (Harry Michell) and the scruffy Rocky (Joel Fry). Unfortunately, they’re pretty much Jack’s only audience at otherwise disastrous pub gigs. They joke and spar with the easy familiarity that characterized similar “family” groups in previous Curtis films such as Notting Hill and Pirate Radio.

And while Rocky is played for easy laughs — inevitably tone-deaf to social decorum — he also serves a more substantial purpose: He’s the brutally honest character/best friend frequently found in Curtis scripts, akin to Charlotte Coleman’s Scarlett (Four Weddings and a Funeral), Rhys Ifans’ Spike (Notting Hill) and Gregor Fisher’s Joe (Love, Actually).

Hilariously daft as Rocky often is — and Fry excels at his character’s lackadaisical nature — he pales alongside this story’s truly sharp-tongued force of nature. But she, too, comes a bit later.

Returning home one night after yet another unsuccessful gig, a freak 20-second global blackout prompts an unfortunate encounter between Jack’s bicycle and a bus he can’t see, until he slams into it. Aside from the bicycle, the collateral damage includes two front teeth and Jack’s beloved guitar. Willing to accept this as a sign, he’s ready to pack it in … until Ellie surprises him with a new guitar.

Play something, his friends insist. So, with a heavy sign, Jack launches into a tender cover Lennon/McCartney’s “Yesterday.”

Everybody listens attentively, even eagerly. Wow, they softly murmur, as he finishes; when did you write that?

At first exasperated, and then irritated — convinced they’re having him on — Jack heads home and hits his computer search engine. And finds nothing about The Beatles. The realization sinks in slowly, followed by an equally audacious notion.

Whereupon everybody in the viewing audience will mentally play along with Jack’s quandary: How accurately could you reconstruct the lyrics to all those Beatles songs, if forced to rely solely on memory?

Followed by the other obvious question: Would those songs become as popular, if introduced in the second decade of the 21st century, as they were back in the 1960s?

Ellie believes yes, after hearing a few more of “Jack’s” compositions (which, it must be acknowledged, Malik covers quite persuasively). So does local, small-potatoes music producer Gavin (Alex Arnold, quietly endearing), who helps Jack and Ellie cut their first album, during a recording session orchestrated with manic joie de vivre by Boyle and editor Jon Harris.

This catches the attention of British pop superstar Ed Sheeran, who offers Jack a spot as the opening act of his upcoming world tour. The latter’s cheeky performance of “Back in the USSR” during their Moscow debut, in turn, raises the eyebrows of Sheeran’s Hollywood-based agent, the aptly named Debra Hammer (Kate McKinnon).

McKinnon, a longtime Saturday Night Live alum, up to this point has sought — and failed to achieve — big-screen cred in junk such as Balls Out, Sisters, Ghostbusters and Rough Night. She should bless the day she encountered Curtis and Boyle. The former has granted her a sharp-edged role tailored to her caustic comedic persona; the latter has checked her ill-advised tendency to overwhelm a scene.

The result is one of the year’s richest, most hilarious supporting performances, with McKinnon note-perfect as a quietly predatory monster who never misses an opportunity to put Jack in his place, even when he doesn’t deserve it. (Actually, he never deserves it.) Whereas Rocky is candid to a well-meaning fault, Debra is snide for personal pleasure; the delight comes from the waspish manner in which McKinnon quietly inserts each verbal shiv. She’s a true force of nature.

Sheeran essentially plays himself — as he also did, in 2016’s Bridget Jones’ Baby — and does a fine job. Ed is soft-spoken, genuine and generous: a performer who has remained a benevolent human being amid the trappings of fame, and therefore is the saintly yin to Debra’s malevolent yang.

In a film laden with quietly poignant moments — many of them the awkwardly intimate encounters between Patel and James — one of the best comes when Ed, impressed but also mildly intimidated by his opening act’s Moscow performance, challenges Jack to an “instant” songwriting contest, to determine which of them can create the better tune in 10 minutes. Ed comes up with a sweet little ballad — an actual Sheeran tune, dubbed “Penguins” — which Jack follows with his “spontaneous” debut of “The Long and Winding Road.”

Sheeran plays the aftermath perfectly.

Exhilarating as it is, to witness Jack’s rise while enjoying so many classic Beatles songs, we’re also intrigued by sidebar questions and mysteries. Will Jack ever notice Ellie’s love? (James makes each crestfallen expression of disappointment more tragic than the one before.) And what’s the deal with the two people — a Russian man, and a British woman — who react with such unreadable surprise to Jack’s performances?

And — a notion also milked for maximum humor — are The Beatles the only detail absent in this “new” world?

Savvy viewers also might anticipate the narrative surprise that Curtis uncorks in the third act, but that won’t lessen its impact; it’s an audaciously powerful sequence, and just right for this delightfully impudent story.

I’m also impressed by the fact that Curtis doesn’t cop out as these whimsically quirky events wind down; we get the conclusion this story absolutely deserves.

Yesterday is a treat, and will remain so today, and for many tomorrows.