Film can make the most tumultous events in human history seem destined for a happy ending. America in the 1960s has been beat like a dead horse in American cinema, as writers, directors and studios with more money than common sense appeal to the rosy glasses of hindsight and that certain mind trick of remembering things exactly how we want: the way the movies such as Across The Universe tell us to.

Yes, the protests of the Vietnam war were attended by every person of college age who hadn't been drafted. That's exactly how it happened. In fact, everyone was a hippie, lived in the Village, and marched on the Mall in DC. Everyone. And you know what else? These children of the Greatest Generation (and those of us who are the grandchildren of the Greatest Generation) are silly enough to forget that this has all been done before, except it was done better when it was called Forrest Gump. When a secret meeting place for peaceniks with pictures of Chairman Mao on the walls gets busted up by a loverboy with a mean streak who punches the ringleader in the face, it never gets old.

Now that Beatles tunes are available to the highest bidder (see also Cirque Du Soleil, Smuckers Stars On Ice ... alright, that one's a joke), someone took the opportunity to put the some of the best pop songs ever written on top of sentimentalized versions of Greenwich Village and civil disobedience. It's pretty bad when the best parts of a movie are actors hacking up beautiful songs in order to spice up the pedestrian acting and make the suit-and-tie sporting poseurs remember themselves as being at the forefront of liberal thinking when the truth is they were sitting pretty in their dorm rooms at some state school spinning Cream records.

That doesn't make our generation any better. We have a war of our own to be disgusted by, but we don't have a draft to dodge, so we don't worry about standing up in protest, we just gussy up our MySpace profiles instead and watch movies like this one instead of writing our own history. This movie being one with thinly veiled references to icons of our parents' generation: a Yoko Ono-esque publisher, a Jimi Hendrix spinoff guitar player, and a raspy chanteuse who vaguely sounds like Janis Joplin.

What's worse, these characters are often named after the subjects of Beatles songs: the Joplin soundalike is named Sadie ("Sexy Sadie"), the loverboy from Liverpool is Jude ("Hey Jude"), the ex-cheerleader is Prudence ("Dear Prudence"), and Lucy ("Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds") is the smoking hot focal point who in real life just so happens to be the muse for one Marilyn Manson.

The movie takes forever to get anywhere. The first forty minutes go by without anything really exciting developing in the plot, and then the animation kicks in right in tune with the best songs from the Beatles' best albums: The White Album, Let It Be, and Abbey Road, if you're asking. Unfortunately, the Beatles did this pop rock musical thing better themselves with A Hard Day's Night. John and George should be turning in their graves.

Tags: Across The Universe, Evan Rachel Wood, Film Reviews, Movies, The Beatles