SanEat
A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."
Roy Hart
If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.
Marva-nova
Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.
bkoganbing
The most important thing about the Beatles arriving in America in January of 1964 to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show is not even mentioned in I Wanna Hold Your Hand. The fact is we were a nation in mourning with our young president slain. The Beatles coming to America was the first thing as a country we got any kind of excited about.I Wanna Hold Your Hand is the story of four young teen girls from New Jersey, Nancy Allen, Wendy Jo Sperber, Susan Kendall Newman, and Theresa Saldana and their quest to see the Beatles up close and personal and maybe get tickets to the Ed Sullivan Show. They inveigle young Marc McClure who is the son of a funeral director in their town to use his limousine, the better to get up to the hotel the Liverpool Lads are staying at. They also pick up Bobby DiCicco who hates the Beatles as foreigners and who are taking the place of his idols the Four Seasons. He's on a mission of his own to halt the broadcast by fair or foul. As history tells us he failed, but you got to see what intervened to prevent him from carrying out his task.Best in the film is Wendy Jo Sperber, the Beatlemaniac on steroids. She is hilarious in her attempts to get to her Fab Four. Most annoying in the film is Eddie Deezen the nerdy kid she teams up with in her quest. I mean he comes off like SuperNerd, his lack of social graces is painful to watch.Pieces and whole songs from The Beatles are heard throughout the film, fans will love it. Robert Zemeckis who directed and wrote the film had a real feel for those crazy times in New York in 1964.
poppcorn-jones
In 1965 I was the Vice President of the Penninsula Chapter of the Beatles Fan club in Los Altos, CA.I never laughed so hard in a theatre as in 1978 when I saw this Masterpiece. This movie was so rite on w/details that the writers had to have been there! When the Beatles stayed at Doris Day's Cabanna hotel in Palo Alto, their bath water was being sold in aspirin bottles $2.00 ea. A fan ate a cigarette butt that was said to be Ringo's. And YES! They cut up the sheets and sold squares! Just As they did in NY. This movie is the REAL DEAL! Eddie Deezen and Wendie Jo Sperber are the greatest comedy team since RALPH and ALICE!!
dustybooks
What happened to Robert Zemeckis? Once upon a time, with Bob Gale, he crafted top-notch comedies unsurpassed by anybody. Gale has been sorely missed since the Zemeckis glory days of this, USED CARS, and the BACK TO THE FUTURE films, but Zemeckis' own retirement from screen writing hurts just as much.This is because the material he chooses lacks the inherent excitement of his work with Gale. What's more interesting: Carl Sagan space movie or Kurt Russell in a used car lot? With these people in charge, the latter wins out easily, and this first effort, released before the Spielberg-directed "1941," is perhaps the best of the Zemeckis/Gale collaborations.The setting of I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND is New York City, February 1964, just after the Beatles have landed. A group of teenagers descend on the Ed Sullivan Theater with disparate motivations: a Fabs fanatic (Wendie Jo Sperber) who hooks up with Beatles obsessive Eddie Deezen (in, believe it or not, a flawless performance), an ambitious young photographer, Nancy Allen as the prudish, tentative bride-to-be who ends up in the Beatles' hotel room, and a stuck-up Peter, Paul & Mary fan determined to stamp out the Beatles. The quiet loser with the car, the laughably clueless tough guy, the kid who needs a haircut, all adding up to a divine celebration.This frantic comedy has the same urgent, blissful atmosphere that makes Richard Lester's A HARD DAY'S NIGHT such an endless delight, and even if Zemeckis can't match the inherent importance of the earlier film, he certainly can evoke its spirit. The characters in this utterly original comedy are all flawlessly developed, and the payoff never feels like a cheat. It helps Zemeckis and Gale that the Beatles were such a brilliant band -- their music lights the movie up -- but they also share with Lester a keen eye for just what the genius of that music really meant to the world, and the result is a real jewel. Its dismal performance at the box-office (along with that of USED CARS) is still an injustice even if the movie has redeemed itself since.Check out the recently-released Universal DVD of I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND, with an excellent commentary by Zemeckis and the always-informative Gale (who, to be fair, does confuse Brian E. with Neil A. at one point, but we forgive him, don't we?).
Lucretia (Cosmic_Cre)
I have always been a massive Beatles fan for as long as I could remember, but I have to admit that after seeing this film, my love for them went to an even higher level.Let me explain... now, I'm what you would call a late generation fan. I wasn't even THOUGHT of in 1964 because at the time, my mom was only 10 and my father was 12. So, with that said, I don't know anything personally about Beatlemania or what this performance meant to the nation at that time or what it was like just being a teenager during this time. That is, until I watched this movie. Watching this film and the antics of these characters is possibly the closest I will ever come to experiencing first hand what Beatlemania was like. It was like I was an unofficial member of this group of kids as they are trying desperately to get tickets to see the Beatles live on the Ed Sullivan show, all this starting by them trying to sneak into the Beatles' hotel.I loved that Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale made a wonderful dynamic by NOT making all the characters involved Beatles fans which made the film that much more believable. Let's face it... as popular as the band was then(and now), they did have a great number of detractors and they were brilliantly represented in this movie by Susan Kendall Newman as politically driven, Janis who feels the Beatles are nothing but meaningless drivel and Bobby Di Cicco as macho greaser, Tony who thinks they just suck, period. Their presence was a great contrast to the rest of the cast, especially Wendie Jo Sperber as the sweet, cherubic Rosie, the most fanatical of the bunch that at one point of the film, she literally throws herself from a moving car just so she can get to a phone booth to win Beatles tickets on a radio call-in contest. The rest of the cast is rounded out by Nancy Allen as Pam, a bride-to-be roped into this adventure against her will and ends up having fortunate luck of accidentally ending up in the Beatles' hotel suite; Theresa Saldana as Grace, the career minded, future reporter who wants exclusive pictures of the band and will do anything(literally) to get them; Marc McClure as Larry, who has a crush on Grace and is willing to do anything to help her achieve her goal and Eddie Deezen as Richard who is Rosie's equally fanatical partner in crime as they reek havoc throughout the hotel.Another thing I thought was a great direction taken by Zemeckis and Gale was to use Beatle sound-a-likes, not look-a-likes and to have the guys' faces hidden. This decision was terrific for this reason: the casting director could have auditioned actors until the cows came home and NONE of them would have been good enough to play the Fab Four. None. Thank goodness Robert and Bob realized that the power just in the Beatles' voices and music was enough not only to be the soundtrack of the film, but allowed we the audience to imagine the real Beatles instead of insulting us by making us accept four actors that would have most definitely paled in comparison to the real thing. I feel that even attempting this would have seriously cheapened the film and wouldn't have given it the impact that it has. It almost has the feel of it being a sort of time capsule and most certainly shows us the difference between hearing about what happened from someone else and being there. The film made me feel like the latter, like I was actually there.So, long story short, the movie is a must-see for any Beatles fan. It'll make you relive the energy and excitement of Beatlemania or if you're like me, who was not around during this time, will show you first hand exactly what it was like.
