“In His Life: The John Lennon Story” is more like “John Lennon: The Early Years.” This two-hour Sunday special on NBC tells the story of Lennon (Phillip McQuillan) and the Beatles in their early music days in Liverpool. It focuses on the introduction of John and Paul and the struggle to put together a good band while still holding on to personal loyalties. It portrays Lennon as a discontented youth who has lots of sex while he writes love letters to a girl back home in Liverpool.
The movie forgets the second half of Lennon’s life. If this John Lennon movie was a mini-series, the second half might have been more interesting than the first. It’s not to say that this movie was boring—Lennon’s youth is interesting—but the movie lacked crucial aspects such as the band’s struggles with success and the Yoko Ono ordeal.
One can’t really expect much from TV movie specials, especially when the boy who plays Lennon looks nothing like the man. McQuillan is a new actor to the small screen, but don’t expect to see much more of him; this boy is definitely lacking skills in the acting category.
And his lack of talent was not the only failure of this movie.
The script was horrible; it never delved into the true feelings of the band; everything was purely surface. Lennon was an inconsiderate, dirty-minded jerk and his band-mates hardly had a voice of their own. It seems like they wanted the viewers to feel for Lennon and his struggles and triumphs, but it just didn’t work. He was always pushing people away and making people feel bad about things they had no control over. He was almost annoying at times, constantly making false promises and claiming to be loyal, but then breaking away from people when things became difficult.
Despite the bad acting and the terrible script, one couldn’t help but want to be a part of the Beatles’ early years, to be one of their screaming groupies and have a chance to say, “I knew them when.” There were even a few exciting scenes in the movie when they were on stage performing. And at times, the band seemed cute, like the real Beatles on stage. Nevertheless, the only movie Beatle that looked even remotely like a real Beatle was Paul McCartney (Daniel McGowan).
If you were expecting to hear a few good Beatles songs, this movie was a disappointment. You might be better off checking out the upcoming re-release of The Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” on the big screen. However, if you wanted to learn about John Lennon’s whole life, “In His Life: The John Lennon Story” fell way short (by like 20 years give or take a few). But if you had absolutely nothing to do last Sunday and you happened to tune in, maybe it wasn’t too disappointing. But let’s face it, there were probably better things you could have been doing with your time.
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