7 Wednesday, July 3, 2019 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com ARTS Have you ever wondered what would happen if a select assortment of pop culture phenomena ceased to exist, only for a handful of people to remember them and have to figure out what to do with that memory? I haven’t either, but “Yesterday” builds a premise around that hyper- specific conflict, specifically as it pertains to The Beatles and the lone, previously unsuccessful musician who remembers them, Jack Malik (Himesh Patel, “EastEnders”). It was a calculated risk — reportedly, 10 million dollars’ worth — to bank an entire film on such a particular dilemma. Why not another band? Better yet, why not pose the same question of another historical phe- nomenon: something of graver con- sequence, like a war? But it’s not my place to postulate about what they could have done; I’m assessing what they did. While they ran with their initial risk, the makers of “Yester- day” played it safe otherwise, and left us with a harmless but perfunctory romantic comedy. Humor has the potential to make laughable concepts appear intelli- gent. Shows like “Seinfeld” got away with it for years. Such an application of humor is vital for a film like “Yes- terday,” to get us past the peculiarity, if not absurdity, of its scenario. In the movie, however, the humor was hit or miss, depending partly on who you are. Just as some of the jokes on the original “Office” bewilder fans of the American adaption, “Yesterday”’s British brand of humor may not reso- nate with the Yankees in the crowd who aren’t bloody interested in the BBC. It relied heavily on situational comedy and deadpan delivery, both of which Patel had the perfect, non- plussed face for. Regardless of who you are, how- ever, the bulk of “Yesterday”’s humor will feel like it’s missing something, and that’s self-deprecation. It’s what made Ed Sheeran’s (“Bridget Jones’s Baby”) cameo so surprisingly hilari- ous with all the jokes about “ginger rap” and subpar lyricism he had to dodge, and Kate McKinnon’s (“The Spy Who Dumped Me”) brutally honest assessments of record execu- tives’ intentions wickedly funny. Curiously, “Yesterday” relegated this kind of humor to the sidelines, when its absurd, world-without-Beatles, butterfly-effect-be-damned main storyline needed it most. We can’t be expected to take you seriously if you’re not self-aware enough to laugh at your quirks. An exercise in self-deprecation: If I were in Jack’s place, one of the few remaining keepers of The Beatles’s music, I’m afraid whatever musi- cal genius John, Paul, George and Ringo offered the world would be lost. That’s not what screenwriter Richard Curtis (“Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again”) had in store for Jack, however, and this element of the film makes a bold, albeit probably inadver- tent, comment on musical genius. By allocating Jack the same proportion of success The Beatles enjoyed from their work, the film implies songs are habitable rather than the product of unique genius, a nice jolt to the West- ern conception of creativity. There’s a clumsiness to even this maneuver, however, as the remakes of Beatles’s hits are touristy, forgettable covers at best, and, on top of the musical medi- ocrity, no one in the movie ever paus- es to interrogate what, if anything, makes Beatles lyrics timeless. That is another one of the film’s biggest faults: With classic cinematic mistrust of audience’s intelligence, it either brushes over or hastens to answer all of the questions it raises. The one original question it stammers out, it hastens to answer in no uncer- tain terms for us. Jack’s ethical dilem- ma, as to whether he should pass off another’s work as his own? Solved. The romantic void Jack must cope with as his fame accelerates expo- nentially? Filled. Don’t you know, his best friend Ellie (Lily James, “Baby Driver”) has been in love with him all his life, and her confession suddenly flips a switch for him. Yes, “Yester- day”: The clumsy comedy comes with clumsy love story on the side. Not what you ordered? Once again, me neither. “Yesterday” does very little harm, but also little notable good, tak- ing few risks, aside from building a movie around a world where the Beatles didn’t record their own songs. You’re probably better off queuing up Abbey Road and asking yourself what your life would be like without those songs, than seeing this film’s mini- mally inventive take on that question. ‘Yesterday’ lacks originality JULIANNA MORANO Summer Managing Arts Editor FILM REVIEW UNIVERSAL PICTURES On June 25, Courtney Barnett opened for The National at Hill Auditorium. Hill is a big venue, and people were still filing in when Barnett took the stage. She began with “Avant Gar- dener,” a song whose title is so endearingly clever that I wish I’d thought of it myself. I’ll say now that I wasn’t a huge fan of Barnett before hear- ing her live. Something about her speak-singing felt overly stylized, and her lyrics seemed too crammed with Dylanesque forced rhymes. Live, she was a whole new ball of wax. Barnett is smaller than I expected, pix- ie-like, with a long mullet that made me fantasize about get- ting the same haircut. She sort of looks like Shailene Woodley. Either way, she came across as both intimidatingly cool and familiar, like someone you’d strike up a conversation with at a co-op party. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what was so incredible about Barnett’s performance. Her voice isn’t lovely, exactly; she mostly yells or speaks along with the music. She’s an excep- tional guitar player, but that alone doesn’t explain it. I think it’s her enthusiasm, the unapol- ogetic excitement with which she performs. Her whole set had the energy of that scene in “Back to the Future” where Michael J. Fox plays Johnny B. Goode. She hopped around the stage, her feet constantly shuffling and moving. As she sang, Barnett dipped her guitar into a never- ending series of maneuvers, as if she were the professional partner in a “Dancing with the Stars” tango and her guitar was the celebrity. At one point she leaned forward, left leg rising behind her like a figure skater, as if she’d become Tonya Hard- ing on season 26 of “Dancing with the Stars.” My point is that Barnett was completely mes- merizing. The only person she even remotely reminds me of is a young Melissa Etheridge, who I’ve never seen live but whose early concert videos show the same kind of physicality. Bar- nett’s head-banging was no less thrilling. The National came onstage a few minutes after Barnett’s giddy farewell (“Thank you!” in a ripper Australian accent). Anyway: The National. The large screens on each side of the stage flashed pixelated videos as they set up, which reminded me of those old ads about movie piracy in which illegally down- loading a movie is compared to stealing purses and televisions. Unfortunately, The National’s performance was as ineffective as those warnings. They began with “You Had Your Soul With You” from their most recent album, I Am Easy to Find. It sounded good in a tight, controlled way — the opposite of Barnett’s freewheel- ing, experimental sound. The next few songs were also from I Am Easy to Find: “Quiet Light,” “The Pull of You,” “Hey Rosey.” They all sounded overproduced to the point of flatness, and the instruments were so loud that I could barely hear frontman Matt Berninger’s voice. I could decipher a few words thanks to Berninger’s habit of acting out the lyrics in a series of jerky motions that looked uncannily similar to the five movements from “The OA.” Once, Berninger walked out along a side aisle and pinned an uncomfortable-looking audi- ence member up against the wall, plucking the man’s base- ball cap from his head and sing- ing plaintively to him. The guy laughed nervously and darted away as soon as Berninger moved on. This episode, like so many in the show, was both indulgent and bizarre. I don’t quite know why Berninger’s physical exhortations were so irritating, but maybe the raw, unassuming quality of Barnett’s performance primed me with a low tolerance for theatrics. Barnett outdoes National at Hill MIRIAM FRANCISCO Daily Arts Writer CONCERT REVIEW Read more at michigandaily.com Yesterday Universal Pictures Michigan Theater