Sit back in your seat and sink into the brilliantly conceived and executed first half hour of “Yesterday” and you’ll see the combined power of co-writer Richard Curtis and gun director Danny Boyle. Not a nanosecond wasted, not a dialogue word that isn’t razor sharp, not a plot point off theme. You’ll have heard of the film’s conceptual conceit – and I marvel that no-one has come up with it before – that the world flips and only one guy, make-work musician Jack Malik (played wonderfully by Himesh Patel), remembers that the Beatles ever existed. This notion allows “Yesterday” to indulge in a celebration of the Beatles’ musical magic and it does that tremendously well. The need to thump down to a happy ending weighs the last quarter of the movie with a shade too much sentimentality for me, but this is a wonderful cinematic outing for young and old alike.
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