Cita:Help! Blu-ray Review
The Beatles and the Temple of Doom.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, June 22, 2013

Did all those drugs The Beatles were so famously consuming in the mid-sixties somehow allow them to peer into their own futures? Is it mere coincidence that The Beatles' second feature film outing, 1965's Help!, has the band intertwined with an Eastern mystic? After all, The Beatles, especially George Harrison, would soon be regularly celebrated acolytes of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Of course Help! doesn't posit a kindly, altruistic yogi, and as The Beatles themselves averred in the years following the film's release, they sometimes felt like strangers in a strange land throughout much of the filming, so Help!'s strangely prescient, if not perfectly relevant, plot points are no doubt serendipitous. The Beatles' first feature film, 1964's A Hard Day's Night, had been phenomenally successful even as it pushed the limits of what a supposed "narrative" film should be. The Fab Four's rabid fan base obviously couldn't have cared less if their idols had recited the phone book for an hour and a half—the fact that writer Alun Owen and director Richard Lester seemed to so perfectly encapsulate the anarchic spirit of the quartet in film form only added to the ineluctable allure of this outing. The film seems to be largely improvised—another testament to the near perfect writing and direction—but that supposed verité style was perhaps more planned than seems obvious on the surface. A Hard Day's Night's overwhelming critical and popular success meant that United Artists basically gave the group and returning director Lester carte blanche for Help!, not to mention a significantly grander budget. While some might feel that the band experiences something of a filmic analog to the oft-mentioned "second album" Sophomore Slump curse that seems to haunt many recording artists, Help! offers its own manic pleasures along the way. If the film sometimes seems to be trying a bit too hard to recapture the madness of A Hard Day's Night, it's also frequently a fast and funny romp that features some of The Beatles' most memorable songs.

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Help! Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation

Help! hasn't aged quite as well as A Hard Day's Night, but it's still hugely enjoyable a lot of the time, especially when The Beatles are playing and singing. The comedy here is hit and miss, but Leo McKern is wonderfully malevolent (while being completely dunderheaded), and the supporting cast has a number of great turns. Ringo turns out to be a rather remarkably affable comedian and anchors the film rather nicely. This Blu-ray offers a significant upgrade from the DVD, though my hunch is this is an older master which has a few issues. The audio is spectacular, and all of the special features from the DVD have been ported over. Highly recommended.

http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Help-Blu-ray/72979/#Review