'Yesterday' review: World without The Beatles is a whimsical work of fan fiction

"Yesterday," Danny Boyle's music-themed comedy about a struggling musician, Jack Malik, who wakes up to find that The Beatles have been erased from history, is one of those movies that will divide audiences into two kinds of people. 

First, there are the casual music fans who will accept the premise as a fanciful delight. They'll enjoy the lively renditions of Beatles classics by Jack (a serviceable Himesh Patel) and savor the unspoken attraction between him and his scrappy manager, Ellie (Lily James). These viewers will get a kick out of seeing pop balladeer Ed Sheeran play himself (rather well, too) and Kate McKinnon as a calculating record executive who holds "the poison chalice of money and fame." It's a classic tale of pop stardom versus the girl you love, set to the greatest songs ever written — what's not to like? 

Then there are the amateur rock historians, like myself, who will begin grumbling as soon as The Beatles vanish in a Y2K-style power outage (set to the orchestral buildup of "A Day in the Life"). This kind of person will lean over and whisper that if The Beatles hadn't released "Rubber Soul" in 1965, then The Beach Boys wouldn't have responded with "Pet Sounds" (1966), which in turn inspired "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (1967). Are we also wiping out The Who, The Kinks and just about every other band of the past 50-odd years? Even beyond music: Without The Beatles, what happens to long hair, hippie couture, Eastern mysticism, an entire counterculture?

This kind of person is not who you want to bring to "Yesterday."  

Then again, this kind of person made the movie. Writer Richard Curtis ("Love, Actually") is reportedly a formidable Beatleologist, and he already paid fond tribute to rock history with 2009's "Pirate Radio." Boyle, a product of the post-punk era, is responsible for 1996's alt-culture landmark "Trainspotting." These two know their stuff, though perhaps only to a point. "Yesterday" seems unaware that streaming platforms exist; Jack's grand plan to release a double-disc set seems a decidedly 20th century idea. "Yesterday" is touchingly convinced that, in a market dominated by hip-hop, R&B and pop, a young rocker could still conquer the world with "All You Need Is Love." 

Some of us may have wanted a profound thought-exercise about The Beatles, but Curtis and Boyle were probably right to sell their movie to the masses. Today, even the world's greatest rock band may be in danger of fading. At least "Yesterday" keeps them alive and fresh in our memories.