Happy just to dance with you

A Hard Day's Night

(1964)

Hey, here's something interesting: one of the very few (the only one on Rotten Tomatoes.com) negative reviews of the film--which, coincidentally, I read earlier this year in a wonderful anthology that friends gave me.

Not gonna get a negative review from me, but is there anything to say about this that hasn't been said four zillion times? I was impressed more than ever this time by how innocent the ostensibly anarchic pop-music world portrayed here was. There was nothing innocent about any of the Beatles by 1964, of course, and John at least gets several lines (and a sly, snorty allusion to different sorts of lines) that hint at their naughtiness, but oh, those screaming girls! Close-ups show girls surely no more than 12 (when 12 was much younger than it is now) who are genuinely desperate with a passion that they almost certainly don't begin to fathom. That scared the crap out of parents of 12-year-old girls then, of course, and not unreasonably, but now it seems so sweet. Those girls will be just fine.