Backbeat

It's a terrific musical biofilm filled with drive, solid characterizations and - biggest surprise of all - musical performances that jump off the screen. [22 Apr 1994, p.33]

Iain Softley directs his feature debut with simplicity and feeling, and you don't have to have been a Beatles fan to get with the beat. Gives you hope for the British film industry. Read full review

Backbeat is a historically plausible take on the relationships between John Lennon, Stuart Sutcliffe and Astrid Kirchherr, and a thoughtful, engaging film. Read full review

Once "Backbeat" catches the beat, it keeps it up, drives right through to the last soul-shattering coda and fadeout. [22 Apr 1994, p.01]

In chronicling Sutcliffe's story, Backbeat smashingly re- creates the Beatles' embryonic years. [04 Feb 1994, p.G19]

Would Backbeat be as compelling a story if it were about, say, Freddie and the Dreamers? Probably not. But despite mostly undistinguished acting and some directorial gracelessness, Backbeat is potent because it tells this emotionally complex and musically exuberant story from every angle conceivable. [22 Apr 1994, p.03]

Considering all the possible ways BackBeat could have been really ridiculous, it's all the more impressive that it should turn out to be an intelligent, sincere and entertaining piece of work. [22 Apr 1994, p.C3]

It's an entertaining and mostly intelligent movie that is grungy enough to appeal to today's rock fans and nostalgic enough to appeal to the aging baby-boomer fans of the Fab Four. [22 Apr 1994]

Backbeat catches the Beatles in the act of discovering themselves. It’s a thrilling spectacle that rocks the house and a lot of lazy misconceptions about how legends are made. Read full review

There's not much story - the lads' experience in Hamburg at the start of the '60s, their disagreements, their acquisition of a loyal club following, and Sutcliffe's appointment with death - so that the film depends for effect on atmosphere, performance and panache. Happily, it largely succeeds in each respect. Read full review

The film conveys the raucous energy that fueled the music, which is delivered with lip-sync abandon to tracks recorded by an alternative rock coalition under the guidance of Don Was. Read full review

Backbeat, directed by Iain Softley, is lively, galvanizing and unexpectedly well made, a far cry from the Madame Tussaud approach often used to enshrine contemporary celebrities. Read full review

Directing the action from a screenplay he wrote with Michael Thomas and Stephen Ward, filmmaker Softley keeps the pace reasonably quick and the images reasonably absorbing. [15 Apr 1994, p.13]

For all its contagious energy and surface authenticity, this early-Beatles docudrama comes off as the kind of biographical movie in which a group of unknowns appear to be all too aware that they're on the verge of international superstardom. [22 Apr 1994, p.D3]

What comes through in "Backbeat," along with the amphetamine-fueled adrenalin of Hamburg, is confusion, bruised feelings and the dawning understanding that life isn't just fun and games -- and neither is rock 'n' roll. Read full review

Iain Softley, its first-time director, handles his actors with skill and has a real flair for comedy. But Backbeat also feels lightweight, not a landmark movie - it betrays its long genesis and many rewrites in an overpacked and unfocussed script, so often the weakness of Palace's previous productions. [01 Apr 1994, p.23]

This energetic, dramatically potent look at the band's Hamburg days has quite a bit going for it in the way of cultural and musical history, but lacks a crucial, heightened artistic quality and point of view that would have given it real distinction. Read full review

Most movies about rock are such dithery jobs that "BackBeat" may seem more impressive than it really is. It's lively and full of good music and it plays around with a fascinating subject -- the Fifth Beatle and his one true love. But it doesn't really illuminate that subject or those years or that music. It's a Pop treatment of Pop. [15 Apr 1994, p.F1]

The movie has trouble getting beyond the winking stage and is always letting you know that these are the soon-to-be famous Beatles. [22 Apr 1994]

It wants to make Stuart Sutcliffe the focus of the film, and it’s never able to convince us there’s a story there. Read full review

The problem is, the characters don't grab me, and the story meanders too much. Read full review

Get back, get back to where you once belonged, you want to shout. But the movie is stuck in the wrong groove. Read full review