"Yesterday" features quite an interesting premise. Our main character Jack Malick (Himesh Patel) is a struggling musician until the strangest experience happens where he ends up in a coma and in turn, awakens into another reality. At first, this reality seems quite similar to the one we know and nothing has changed. Soon we find out that in this reality that the great band of all time "The Beatles" do not exist in this reality whatsoever.
Jack is one of "The Beatles" biggest fans ever knows the songs by heart and begins to write down their songs and their lyrics. Luckily he is a talented albeit unsuccessful musicians that use "The Beatles" songs and passes them as his own. This strange premise leads to a very interesting course of events throughout the movie.
Personally, I found this premise quite intriguing. I noticed this premise is sort of like an extreme case of what some might call "The Mandela Effect." For those that don't know what it is it is certain people who claim that they remember things being one way one they actually happened another way. Now whether or not one believes such a thing is possible or not is one matter but the whole concept of it is indeed quite fascinating. The fact that a movie explored such a theme is indeed quite intriguing and I wish they had explored it a bit more. This movie in particular just focuses on a world without the absence of "The Beatles" (along with the absence of Harry Potter, Coca-Cola, cigarettes, and Oasis).
This movie is a romantic comedy/fantasy and does a good job of being light-hearted and fun. Himesh Patel does a great job as both an actor and a singer. He was the perfect choice for the role. Him being obscure really helped with the entire premise of his character being some obscure artist that nobody ever heard of. Had some A-List actor been cast in the role it would have made the premise even less believable than it already was.
Once again this movie has an incredibly promising premise yet I feel not as much is explored about this type of premise as they could have been. While I enjoyed this movie and praise its originality I do wish it had gone a little further in pushing the boundaries of this unique idea. Hopefully, more movies in the future will use this idea and apply it in all sorts of interesting ways.
The high points of the movie aside from the premise would be of course the music. Himesh Patel does a great job of playing the Beatles music yet adds just a little bit of his own flavour to it. He was clearly chosen for this movie for his lovely singing. I am so happy he was cast as opposed to some A-List actor. Ironically, this movie is his movie debut which will, in turn, make him far more famous than he ever was before. This movie is indeed a prime example of art imitating life or should I say art creating life? Aside from Himesh Patel, Lilly James does a fine job as "Ellie" despite the character being somewhat underused. Joel Fry as "Rocky" had me persistently laughing throughout the movie. To me he gave off a bit of a "Forrest Gump" mixed with some type of stoner vibe. Ed Sheeran played himself or at least a version of himself that society sees him as. The cast was all quite likable and played their parts well.
Overall I'd give this movie a 7/10 a really fun movie with a promising albeit underused premise. This movie was pretty good although I think it had masterpiece potential. That being said it is still quite likable all around and I would recommend everyone who loves the Beatles to go ahead and see it.