Himesh Patel stars as Jack Malik, a struggling musician. One night, there is a freak occurrence where all of the electricity in the entire world goes off for twelve seconds. Jack is riding his bike with his guitar strapped to his back when this happens and gets hit by a bus in the ensuing darkness. He wakes up in the hospital to learn that he has been incredibly lucky; he is missing his two front teeth but is otherwise okay. He gets together with friends to celebrate his release from the hospital, and Ellie Appleton (Lily James), his longtime manager, gives him a new guitar as a get-well gift. He picks it up and plays the Beatles' "Yesterday" for his friends, much to their astonishment: when did he write that?! In confusion, he tells them that Paul McCartney wrote it. "Who's Paul McCartney?" one of them asks. Upon returning home, he Googles the Beatles and can find no evidence of them on the Internet. He checks his closet and can find none of his Beatles albums. It is as if they never existed. He begins performing their songs. At first, nothing really happens, but after he makes a CD of a few songs and is discovered by Ed Sheeran, his career takes off. Ellie tells him she has feelings for him, but believes even as she delivers the news that it is already too late for them.
The film brings up a lot of questions and issues that are dealt with only in passing, perhaps because the film is split between being about the freak occurrence and being a love story between Jack and Ellie. For example, Jack writes down the titles of all of the Beatles songs he can think of on Post-Its; eventually, he runs into problems when he is left with only ones that are about places he has never been and people he doesn't know, or ones where he can't remember the lyrics perfectly. It seems like this would happen sooner. Does even the biggest Beatles fan know most of their songs verbatim? Also, when he first starts playing the songs, he is frustrated when his career doesn't take off immediately; he tells Ellie that he knows that the songs are strong, so it must be something about HIM. I wondered about that, as well, as there are so many factors that go into a band or musician's popularity besides just having good songs and having the musical ability to perform them. There is also a scene where he is encouraged to change they title and lyrics of "Hey, Jude," to "Hey, Dude," and a scene where he meets with a large team of marketing consultants who point out how weird and unmarketable an album title like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band sounds in theory. That occurred to me, as well; I feel fairly confident that songs like "Yesterday" and "Let it Be" could be as popular if they were released today as when they were released then. I wonder more about songs like "I am the Walrus." I found myself wondering more about these types of particulars, and wanting the movie to delve more into them; they were usually fairly quickly handled or dismissed as evidence of how ridiculous the music industry is today.
It is a fairly fun and charming movie, with obviously good music. However, it's best to go in willing to just roll with the concept and not ask too many questions, because a lot of them aren't answered or aren't dealt with more than in passing. I may have just been expecting it to be something other than what it was.
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