Yesterday review: A pleasant but flimsy romantic comedy that imagines a world without The Beatles

With a screenplay by Richard Curtis, Danny Boyle’s far-fetched tale of plagiarism has nothing like the momentum of the director’s best works

Dir: Danny Boyle; Starring: Himesh Patel, Lily James, Kate McKinnon, Ed Sheeran. Cert TBC, 116 mins.

Imagine a world without The Beatles. That’s what Danny Boyle’s Yesterday – scripted by Richard Curtis from a story by Jack Barth – attempts to do. The result is a pleasant but flimsy romantic comedy, ultimately undermined by its own wafer-thin premise.

Early on, the film is at its most engaging. Jack (Himesh Patel from EastEnders), a mediocre singer-songwriter from Lowestoft, is the quintessential lovable loser. He performs soppy ballads in a tent at Latitude Festival in front of an audience of a couple of kids and their parents. He has a job in a food warehouse, and is beginning to accept that if he hasn’t made it yet as a singer, he probably never will. The only one who believes in him is his irrepressibly enthusiastic manager, Ellie (Lily James in delightfully kooky form), whose real job is as a Year 10 maths teacher. Then comes the mysterious accident.

While cycling home during a global power cut that lasts for 12 seconds, Jack is hit by a bus. He wakes up missing some teeth, and soon discovers that every trace of John, Paul, Ringo and George have been erased. When he looks them up on Google, all he finds are entries for “beetles” and for Pope John Paul. The Beatles’ albums have also mysteriously disappeared from his collection. Nobody else in the world knows of the band’s identity. Jack spots an opportunity. He not only starts performing Beatles hits, but allows everyone to think that he has written them.

“It’s not Coldplay,” one friend grumbles when Jack sings “Yesterday”, though he concedes that it’s a very nice song. He tries to play “Let it Be” (or “Leave it Be” as they think it is called) for his parents (played by Meera Syal and Sanjeev Bhaskar from The Kumars) but they are too distracted to pay much attention. He performs in pubs, and eventually finds a young George Martin-type willing to record his music – in a bedsit studio based right beside a level crossing.

From here, an initially amiable and witty film soon begins to lose its way. Strangely, it is when Ed Sheeran appears (as himself) that the confusion sets in. Sheeran loves Jack’s songs, which he sees as an expression of “pure genius”, little realising that they were all actually written by Lennon and McCartney. Jack may perform the songs and claim that he has written them, but he doesn’t understand the emotions behind them. When Sheeran asks what inspires him, he has nothing meaningful to say.

With its running, jumping and wild kinetic energy, Boyle’s Trainspotting was like one of Richard Lester’s Beatles movies. Yesterday doesn’t have the same momentum. Curtis’ screenplay fails to explain why certain elements of pop and consumer culture (Oasis and coke as well as the Fab Four) have been wiped from popular memory, or why Jack is the only one who still knows about them. There is also something furtive about the way that Jack behaves. He is likeable, self-deprecating and funny – and yet is prepared to plagiarise on a massive scale and to steal plaudits that shouldn’t be his.

Patel performs the Beatles songs, be they the ballads or the rock and roll anthems, with plenty of élan. Jack is being groomed for worldwide stardom by Sheeran’s ruthless, outspoken manager, Deborah (Kate McKinnon from Saturday Night Live). McKinnon is brash and very funny in the role, but plays it in very broad fashion, as if she is a character in a comedy sketch show, not a feature film.

Curtis’ screenplay keeps the jokes coming, even when the story itself is beginning to creak. One of the better scenes involves an army of American marketing executives trying to come up with album concepts. Jack’s suggestions of titles like The White Album, Abbey Road or Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band are given very short shrift.

The remaining real-life Beatles must have approved the film, which at the very least is an excellent showcase for their music. Sadly, though, Yesterday has nothing like the velocity of Boyle’s best films.