Julie Taymor's highly ambitious musical received reactions across the board from ecstatic joy to finger-pointing disapproval. I am definitely in the former camp and the DVD has become my favorite so far this year - in fact it took me 5 hours to complete my viewing as I was continually repeating/replaying chapters (songs). Taymor seems to revel in her own fearlessness as evidenced by taking on Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus in her 1999's Titus (to the chagrin of Bard purists). It is also there that she showed her ability to infuse the frame with an incredibly ravishing color palette. I watched this with pretty much no idea what to expect and was initially overwhelmed by the visual and aural candy on display. After the first 25 minutes into the SD, I hit the pause button, and ordered the Blu-ray online. Sure, I grew up with The Beatles - owning every vinyl, then CD. But beyond the nostalgic pleasure and brilliance of the music and lyrics - Taymor does a reasonable job binding the narrative as well - although this is understandably the weak point of the film. It would also seem an impossible task to covey with important accuracy.

This film has some real depth far beyond most musicals and could have been 6 hours long if character development was part of the main intention, but it wasn't... and isn't in musicals. Musicals are fantasy and this is the best of its kind I have seen in years. The constant hinting at Beatle-isms beyond the lyrics with the cut apple-esque logo creation (it's really a strawberry) and character names such as Lucy, Prudence ('How did she get here?' - "She came in through the bathroom window"), Rita, JoJo etc. Finally this is not a perfect film, but I think I'd recommend it to you if only to own Martin Luther McCoy's performance of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". In all honestly, I LOVED every minute of Across the Universe.