Today's lesson, kids: a little enthusiasm can be a dangerous thing.
It's misplaced enthusiasm which has led me to sign up again for Write 31 Days. True, it wasn't enthusiasm but pragmatism that led me to spend a couple of hours yesterday afternoon seeking out a bunch of suitable films, and, as I began running short of ideas, the urge to type worst musicals into the search bar was probably less enthusiasm and more outright masochism. I was feeling on a roll, though, and when I came upon a clip from the 1978 musical Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, I felt that sudden rush of blood that I always get when I feel as though I might have found something a little bit special.
This is not something that has ever ended well in the past. Stay apathetic, kids, and leave your sanity and your retinas intact.
I can count three Beatles-based musicals off the top of my head that haven't actually starred the Beatles. Yellow Submarine is an institution, of course, a trippy, slightly creepy joy from back in the days when animation was allowed to be properly weird and was all the better for it. Far later, in 2007, we have Julie Taymor's Across the Universe, which resides in an unmentionable spot somewhere on my list of films to watch when I'm actively in the mood to be irritated. In between, meanwhile, there was Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, whose sorry status as possibly the first jukebox musical somehow manages to be the very least of its crimes.
On the whole, I think the thing that I like the least about this particular atrocity is its tendency to linger. Where the likes of Xanadu and Rock of Ages are thankfully ephemeral in their awfulness, Sgt. Pepper lingers like the taste of a badly-barbecued sausage en route from bad decision to full-on food poisoning. Bits of it keep rising up like chunky burps and forcing themselves, unwanted, back into my consciousness - the robot gimps, for instance, or the rollerskating pantomime horse, or Frankie Howerd as a leering, gropey villain.
The story, such as it is, is saturated in a peculiarly 1970s sort of morality, the kind of mindlessly cheery energy that birthed the likes of The Brady Bunch. It's concerned with the small (Midwestern?) town of Heartland, which has been watched over by the spirit of Sergeant Pepper and his brass band since the first world war. When the Sergeant dies, a group of successors are sought, cheery of face and shaggy of perm - I can't recall the character names, but since any acting was purely nominal let's just refer to them as Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees. The first time they play, they're promptly recruited to a large, unscrupulous record label, which takes them off to Hollywood and leaves the town ripe for plunder by Howerd's thoroughly dodgy property developer and his sinister robot servants.
The aim seems to have been for the story to be carried in its entirety by Beatles songs - from Sgt. Pepper, Abbey Road and a couple from George Harrison's solo oeuvre. With such a broad variety of material and styles, however, this proved difficult, leaving George Burns' Mr. Kite to function as an uncomfortable narrator. It doesn't work, not entirely; the piece remains largely incoherent despite being a pretty standard rags-to-riches job. The sets and constumes all reek of kids' TV, which make the sex and drugs and rock'n'roll stuff look really weird. Oh, and as is frequently the case, it's only the evil female characters who wear visible makeup.
I'm probably making Sgt. Pepper sound irredeemable, and to be honest, it is. The film isn't without its moments, however, even if they don't compensate for everything else. While the Bee Gees' sound is mostly too anaemic for the material, for instance, their sharp but ethereal harmonies are perfect for the song Nowhere Man, while Aerosmith take Come Together and give it the nasty, sleazy patina of grime it didn't know it needed. Newcomer Sandy Farina, meanwhile, acquits herself well enough as the godawfully-named Strawberry Fields, playing it straight even when the lyrics she's asked to sing make zero narrative sense.
Tune in on Thursday for the first of my 31 Days entries, when I'll be examining another 70's "classic". You lucky, lucky people.
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