The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years (2016)

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Made mostly of archival footage... most of it recoloured, this is quite a nice documentary... I was expecting a bit more though. Aside a few bits here and there, there doesn't seem to be that much that's new... even if there is... director Ron Howard says there is. What could be more familiar than The Beatles though? Certainly not an easy story to breathe new life into! All that said, 50 years on from the time, it remains quite incredible to watch the furore that they created, just how new, fresh, raw they were. So disregard my initial thoughts, forget pointless analysis, it's The Beatles! The greatest band the world has ever seen. Just enjoy it and lose yourself if only for a 106 minutes.

Why are the Beatles still, almost sixty years after they originally formed, the most famous rock band in the world? Partly because they came in at the dawn of (and helped shape) youth culture - Beatlemania was an unprecedented phenomenon. But also because they came in at the dawn of (and helped shape) modern popular music - and did so both initially as purveyors of superior, catchy, but essentially lightwieght music, and then later as genuine artists, who widened the vocabulary of music itself. And they did all this in just ten years. Ron Howard's documentary tells the first half of the story, in which they became the world's biggest touring band, but also began a transition that was to lead them to their greatest works, but also off the live stage. It's not a bad film, with plenty of songs and concert clips, interviews old and new, and it's both interesting and delightful to see the freshness and honesty of the band in their early days: when the road to superstardom was unmapped, they seem human in a way that few of their successors do. The "we all loved each other" story is probably only part of the truth - but it's broadly plausible as an account of the early years in a way it wouldn't be of the later ones. It's hard to imagine there will ever be another group that achieves the same impact on music and the world.

After more than 50 years, there's not much new that can be said about the birth and rise of the "Beatlemania" phenomenon, so don't expect any great surprises or revelations in Ron Howard's documentary of the Beatles touring period. The footage is great as are the interviews (even the 'celebrity' interviews such as Whoopi Goldberg add something to the story). No reason to suggest Beatle's fans watch this new addition to Beatle-nostalgia (they will), but the movie's worth viewing by anyone who remembers the era or likes the music (or, of course, both). I still find it sad to watch images of John Lennon, knowing how pointless and untimely his death was.

This does have some interesting elements to it but in the main I didn't really see or hear anything new.Of course it is always great seeing the Beatles perform in their hey day but even the clips chosen were not necessarily the best they could have used. I would have preferred to have seen better and longer clips of them playing instead of concentrating on the screaming stadium concerts which I am sure even the Beatles would admit were not their best.Some of the 'guest stars' chosen were bizarre. I couldn't care less what a second rate comedian such as Eddie Izzard thinks.I like Ron Howard and think he is usually a good director but this is not his finest moment.