Previously, The Beatles had experienced box office success with their first two films, A Hard Day’s Night and Help! Both helmed by American director Richard Lester (Superman II, Superman III). However, Magical Mystery Tour was completely The Beatles project—conceived and directed by the group the group themselves. A brainstorm of Paul McCartney’s, the idea was to hire a bus, put themselves on it, some friends, a few professional actors, and some extras, drive it around and see what happened. Each Beatle contributed ideas that made their way into the shoot. For instance, John had a dream in which a waiter shoveled mounds of spaghetti onto his plate, which he thought was funny enough to propose filming. As for the dialogue, most of that was improvised.
The story told in Magical Mystery Tour isn’t coherent at all. Narrative threads are started and dropped just as quickly. For better or worse, some of the Beatles seem to really enjoy hamming it up for the camera. Ringo—along with his fictional Auntie Jessie (Jessie Robins)—drives what plot there is, given his outgoing personality. Paul McCartney partially plays the role of straight man, coming off cool and above the antics surrounding him. John and George barely appear at all, except during the song performances. The Beatles are enthusiastic riders on the bus, laughing almost maniacally at the goings on, but little of it makes any sense!
The Beatles being The Beatles, the highlight of Magical Mystery Tour comes in the songs, presented as kind of crude music videos between these strange narrative threads. The six songs featured are: “Magical Mystery Tour”, “The Fool on the Hill”, “Flying”, “I Am The Walrus”, “Blue Jay Way” and “Your Mother Should Know,” all of which are likely instantly recognizable by any fan of The Fab Four. The guys began working on Magical Mystery Tour after the Sgt. Pepper album, a time when they were arguably at their musical best.
If you’ve never seen a Beatles film before, check out A Hard Day’s Night or Help! first. If Magical Mystery Tour wasn’t a project by The Beatles, it would have been forgotten years ago. For fans of John, Paul, George and Ringo, it’s worth adding this to your collection, if only for completists sake.
Presented in the 1.33:1 aspect ratio, this newly remastered edition looks solid. The numerous psychedelic color schemes are vivid. Detail is pretty good; it’s nothing like you might see on a blu-ray, but for a standard DVD, it’s quite impressive.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 Audio track provides clear and fairly concise (some of the characters are difficult to understand) dialogue. Perhaps more importantly, the music comes through clearly and seems to use all channels throughout.
English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish subtitles are available.
The following special features are included:
- Audio Commentary by Actor/Director Paul McCartney: McCartney provides a screen specific commentary that delivers some interesting information on different scenes and the actors. It should be said that McCartney sounds a bit tired during the second half.
- The Making of Magical Mystery Tour (19:05) Interviews with Paul, Ringo and other cast and crew members. We also get to see some behind-the-scenes footage that makes it clear that little about this film was pre-planned.
- Ringo The Actor (2:30) Ringo talks about why he was given the biggest speaking role in the film.
- Meet The Supporting Cast (11:27) We get some background information on actors Nat Jackley, Jessie Robins, Ivor Cutler, The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, Victor Spinetti, George Claydon, and Derek Royle. This is a nice feature, because some of these actors appear on the screen more often than members of The Beatles.
- “Your Mother Should Know” (2:35) New edit of this performance with footage not seen in the original film.
- “Blue Jay Way” (3:53) New edit of this performance with footage not seen in the original film.
- “The Fool On The Hill” (3:05) New edit of this performance with footage not seen in the original film.
- Hello Goodbye (3:24) A promo featured on Top of the Pops in 1967.
- Nat’s Dream (2:50) Directed by John Lennon, this scene featuring Nat Jackley ended up on the cutting room floor.
- Ivor Cutler “I’m Going In A Field” (2:35) A musical number from Ivor Cutler that ended up on the cutting room floor.
- “Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush” (1:53) In this deleted scene, The band Traffic (featuring Steve Winwood) acted out their 1967 hit, “Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush.”
- Booklet: This eight page booklet has an introduction from Paul McCartney, planning graph for the film and cast information.
