The Beatles Album: “Celebration”

Don't waste your money on this slopped together shameful unauthorized Beatles "documentary"; Get the Beatles Anthology instead. This is hardly watchable in DVD; with varying quality archival footage; bad to worse. One of the interviews with McCartney looks like it was recorded with a surveillance camera. Shame on you, Geoffrey!

A friend of mine spent her hard-earned cash to buy me this disc as part of her Christmas present to me last year, and I still feel badly on her behalf. This is no cohesive documentary the way that "The Compleat Beatles" was all those years ago; this is instead an assortment of interview clips and location shots cobbled together in a haphazard manner. Self-proclaimed Beatle expert Geoffrey Guilano was apparently unwilling or unable to license any Beatle music for this project, so right off the bat this project has a big strike against it. Guiliano might have redeemed himself had he been able to get a hold of some insightful interview clips with the Beatles and their associates; instead he makes do with public domain clips of McCartney press conferences and interviews with former drummer Pete Best, who was fired just prior to the band inking their record deal. This is supposed to be interesting? I've had more fun rearranging my sock drawer... Please, Beatle fans, don't fall for this rip-off masquerading as a documentary; just about anything else you could do with your money would be better than purchasing this travesty.

After so many film projects that documented the Beatles, including the "Anthology," "The Compleat Beatles," and others, when I bought this DVD I was impressed,not with the lack of detail or music, but with the efforts to explain the impact of the Beatles on American society; we finally get to see a documentary that put the effects before the causes. Many documentaries fail to do that.