By Dan Pavelich
Jack has aspirations of being the next Ed Sheeran. The only trouble is, his original songs fail to find a friendly ear, outside of the dutiful three friends that show up to root him on at every local pub gig.
On the verge of packing it all in, Jack is persuaded by his longtime friend and manager, Ellie, to give it one more try, at the summer festival that he’s always dreamt of playing, where she’s gotten him a gig. The gig is a disaster, and Jack seems sure to quit, when there’s a world-wide power outage that results in him colliding with a bus in the darkness.
Jack wakes up in the hospital, missing two front teeth and his trademark beard. He also slowly discovers that he has awakened in a world where The Beatles never existed. He reluctantly decides to claim the songs that they wrote as his own, which leads to some very interesting twists and turns that I can’t reveal without spoiling the plot.
Jack is played by Himesh Patel, with the perfect amount of innocence and general likability. Manager Ellie is sweetly portrayed by Lily James, who is secretly in love with Jack, and the character that we’re really rooting for throughout.
As one might expect, there is a ton of Beatle music in this movie, so you’d better like the band if you want to see this. “Yesterday” is perfect for a date night, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.