Cheap A Hard Day's Night (Video) (Richard Lester) Price

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Customer Reviews of A Hard Day's Night

The Grandads of the Boy Bands
See the movie that inspired the Monkees (or at least, the producers of the monkees). This black and white, loosely structured film is a lot of fun. Shot and edited in an extremely short period of time, it seems to have benefited from being put in the can before anyone could fuss over it too much and leach it of its playfulness and originality. Unlike Dylan and Baez in DON'T LOOK BACK, the Beatles were playing characters, not trying to project their own PR images. And they seemed to enjoy doing so. While the Swingin' England costumes, hairstyles, and backdrop makes you wish someone had put up the pounds for color film, the b&w camera work evokes the other great b&w films of that era: Darling, Alfie, Georgie Girl, to name a few. What I found most amusing was how polite the Beatles were to the adults in the movie (George actually apologizes to a sports coach for running around on his "private property.") There are no clues that I could detect of the role these four baby-faced musicians would have in the counter-culture movement of the next half decade.

The music is great, of course...but the songs were either shorter than I remembered, or have been edited down somewhat. It would have been nice if the second DVD had some outtakes (maybe they used every frame they shot) or news footage from the time. Instead, it contains countless interviews with just about everyone connected to the film. Interesting reminiscences, but enough is enough. (I doubt that I'll ever play the second DVD again.)

More than mere nostalgia, this is a great movie!

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Should Have Known Better....
As one of those lucky millions who was cellularly changed when the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, I was so happy when this became available on DVD that I watched it uncritically in one gulp, loving every morsel. Then I watched it again. The picture is wonderful, but the musical sound, as others have noted, is particularly poor at times. It does not seem to blend in to the movie, it seems to stand out in some kind of sterile, sonic relief from the actual film. A very bad sounding echo is added to the TV show scenes, and the sound on She Loves You becomes abruptly, bafflingly muffled and muddy. Very disappointing. Why mess with perfection? I also agree with another person who felt that the visual presentation of the package was poor. Right on--why not stay with some version of the original graphics, which were simple, brilliant, and familiar. This box is sterile-looking and has no resonance with any other visual iconcography associated with the film. Some stupid decisions were made here.... That being said, the movie is still brilliant, still fun, and still exciting to watch. The style is as original as the Beatles themselves. There is plenty of social commentary, and enough thematic & visual motifs to keep the film students working hard. Maybe Miramax will wise up and reissue this in a more reverent fashion. Sometimes change for the sake of change is not a good thing. Messing with this film was like putting out a version of the Bible in some weird font with illustrations by Leroy Neiman.

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Seriously Lacks Originality
An overrated band starring in an overrated documentary. I was under the impression that the goal of a film such as this was to convey a sense of time and place, and realism, but apparently the cliched "flop tops" couldn't be bothered for that. In 90 minutes, these third-rate musicians skip a television rehearsal almost ruining the entire program, neglect responding to fan mail, harass their manager, harass young women, harass old women, harass the police, encourage school drop-out, endanger the elderly, and let's not forget play horrible generic pop music (which is obviously lip-synched, completely destroying any realism the director might have been going for). I'm surprised they weren't arrested, seeing as how all of their deeds were caught on film. If anyone had a Hard Day's Night from this film, it was me from the nightmares I had after seeing it. God bless Aaron Carter - now there's a candidate for a documentary!