Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (film)

Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band
File:Sgtpepperdvd.jpg Cover art for the DVD
Directed by	Michael Schultz
Written by	Henry Edwards
Produced by	Robert Stigwood
Starring	Peter Frampton The Bee Gees
Cinematography	Owen Roizman
Edited by	Christopher Holmes
Music by	The Beatles
Distributed by	Universal Pictures (USA) Paramount Pictures (non-USA)
Release dates	July 21, 1978 (USA)
Running time	113 min.
Language	English
Budget	$18,000,000 (estimated)

Billy Preston as Sgt. Pepper.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is an American musical film released in 1978. Its soundtrack, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, features new versions of songs originally written and performed by The Beatles, primarily those on their 1967 album of the same name.

The production is somewhat adapted from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on the Road, a 1974 off-Broadway production directed by Tom O'Horgan. It tells the loosely-constructed story of a band as they wrangle with the music industry and battle evil forces bent on stealing their instruments and corrupting their home town of Heartland. The film is presented in the form of a rock opera with the Beatles' songs providing "dialogue" to carry the story.

The film's tagline is "A splendid time is guaranteed for all".

Overview

The film was produced by Robert Stigwood, who had earlier produced Saturday Night Fever. Beatles producer George Martin served as musical director, conductor, arranger and producer of the soundtrack album.

The film featured several performers at the height of their popularity:

• the Bee Gees, whose music had been integral to Saturday Night Fever,
• Peter Frampton, whose album Frampton Comes Alive! was the biggest-selling live album ever at the time, and
• Steve Martin, whose A Wild and Crazy Guy was released that same year, reaching number two on the music-dominated Billboard 200 album charts.

The cast also featured Frankie Howerd, Paul Nicholas, George Burns, Donald Pleasence, Sandy Farina, Dianne Steinberg, Aerosmith, Earth Wind and Fire, Billy Preston, Alice Cooper, and Stargard.

Critical reaction

Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that the film's "musical numbers are strung together so mindlessly that the movie has the feel of an interminable variety show"; while it may have been "conceived in a spirit of merriment, ... watching it feels like playing shuffleboard at the absolute insistence of a bossy shipboard social director. When whimsy gets to be this overbearing, it simply isn't whimsy any more." She complimented Martin on his "completely unhinged rendition of "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," but pointed out that his scene is a "reminder that the film is otherwise humorless."

Perry Seibert of All Movie Guide called the film "quite possibly the silliest movie ever conceived," with a "handful of high camp moments" featuring Martin, Burns, and Aerosmith who "somehow transcend the jaw-dropping inanity that poisons the rest of the cast."

The critics panned this release and many of the performers in the film went on record saying they thought the movie was tripe, most notably, The Bee Gees, Peter Frampton and Aerosmith. The former Beatles also thought the film was terrible - Paul and George were famously outspoken on the movie. Besides the famous people associated with the project, many Beatle fans themselves thought the movie was a waste of time.

However, the passage of time has proven to be a significant factor in the public's approval of the film. It was recently remastered and released on DVD (albeit in a slightly altered form), and garnered generally positive reviews.

Trivia

• The prop cornet played by Billy Preston was a non-functioning instrument built by instrument maker Dominick Calicchio. It is housed today in the National Music Museum in Vermillion, South Dakota.

See also

• Across the Universe, a 2007 musical film with a similar concept, using The Beatles songs to tell a story.