Yellow Submarine

Sad as it remains, The Beatles will always be with us. Not so much because their music continues to enthuse successive generations of listeners as that they steadfastly refuse to go away. If the 'Anthology' series was meant to be a cathartic final statement of their place in pop history, then this spit and polish job on one of many regrettable chapters in the Mop Tops' career is the moment when any remaining leering reverence of our pop heritage should end.

The 1999 'Yellow Submarine', remastered and beefed up to include all of the songs featured in the film at the expense of George Martin's soundtrack music, is effectively a compilation of psychedelic-era Beatles tunes you've already heard to death saddled together with the four desultory arrogant efforts provided to give their animated feature debut some box office spice. 'Altogether Now' is a half-arsed nursery rhyme, 'Hey Bulldog' a shambolic doodle. 'Only A Northern Song' is a mean-minded contract filler and 'It's All Too Much' is a deranged flower power epic which would be worth the price of admission if you didn't feel the musical soul of your generation was at stake.

The evidence here shows that in 1968 The Beatles treated 'Yellow Submarine' as an irksome feature of their recently deceased manager Brian Epstein's legacy. Why, then, should we be fooled by this nasty marketing ploy of presenting it to us as a prized relic now?

This is an exercise in mercenary economics as crass, lazy and cynical as it was at the time of the initial '...Submarine' launch. Neither fab nor gear, someone clearly thinks we're idiots.

If you really need to see a shitty kids movie which isn't half as clever as it thinks it is, try The Phantom Menace.