IMAGINE
Considering how iron-handedly Yoko Ono allegedly oversaw the Imagine project, both the film and accompanying picturebook, I guess it could’ve been worse. But not much. The “years in the making” tagline normally associated with such undertakings appears here, and the care is certainly obvious—in some cases.
IMAGINE
(Warner Bros. Films)
Considering how iron-handedly Yoko Ono allegedly oversaw the Imagine project, both the film and accompanying picturebook, I guess it could’ve been worse. But not much. The “years in the making” tagline normally associated with such undertakings appears here, and the care is certainly obvious—in some cases. Mostly, and understandably, most of the care is taken with the John’n’Yoko era when they were practically psychically merged. We see scene after scene of bed-ins, bag-ins, loving times spent alone in the country .. .some of it verging on soap operadom (though at least one segment—a caricaturishly rightwing, yet almost sensible Al Capp baiting the stoic lefty couple during one bed-in—nearly saves the whole later portion).
What we don’t see, however, is anything remotely un-cobwebbed Beatles-wise. It’s as if that whole era of John Lennon’s life was an afterthought, a sidebar to the husband/ dad Yoko tries to have painted.
Besides the omissions, there are some mistakes (for lack of a better word) so glaring that one hardly has to be a Beatlemaniac to catch ’em. F’rinstance, a voiceover blathering on about the Fab Four’s riot-