All you need is love. Really.

I have seen the new restored version of Yellow Submarine, which will be released on blu-ray next month, and am happy to report that it looks excellent. If you're like me, you've already seen the movie multiple times, always on that crappy old out-of-print DVD from forever ago that you probably paid too much for on e-bay. Or you have the laserdisc, which I can't imagine being any better looking and which probably made your wallet suffer big time.

Anyway, this is a movie that always seems to slip past my mind despite how many times I've seen it. That's partly because I consider A Hard Day's Night to be the superior film. I mean, anybody who watches that one comes out a Beatles fan. If you jump straight to Yellow Submarine because of nostalgia (For Pete's sake, how old are you?) or because of its infamy, that's not the best idea. This is 60s psychedelia at its peak and the experience is not well interpreted across cultures. I recommend being a fan of the music and/or the era before taking the leap. Also, if you haven't seen A Hard Day's Night, go watch it. I'm serious.

When I use the word psychedelic to describe anything, it seems to conjure up the wrong idea. People imagine a long-bearded, sunglasses-wearing, dope-smoking hippie who speaks in a slow slur about "the man" and "peace." What I really mean is that this movie is quite the trip. It is animated, in case you didn't know, so anything can happen, and it does. Some of the strangest things ever put to film are gleefully thrown at us at a rapid pace in a cheap cartoon style that is jarring at first, but you get used to it. I should point out that I think too much credit is given to drug use when these sort of things are discussed. I think more of the bizarre things in the movie spring from a good imagination than from illegal substances, something I feel better about praising.

The movie takes place in Pepperland which lays (or lies) beneath the sea and is a colorful place where large words like LOVE and YES and KNOW grow up out of the ground all over. This happy place is over-run by the Blue Meanies, who only take no for an answer. One of the things that occurred to me during this last viewing is that Blue Meanies did not exist prior to the making of this film. These music-hating cotton balls with their Mickey Mouse ears and apples of mass destruction have become such a permanent part of my entertainment subconscious that they may as well be real creatures. More importantly, the Beatles really were real. Oddly enough, John, Paul, George, and Ringo had almost nothing to do with the making of this picture. They commissioned an animated movie so they wouldn't have to actually go through the trouble of appearing in another one; they didn't even provide speaking voices. They did provide the dry sense of humor the movie so craftily emulates, and, of course, the songs.

I guess the title song is the most famous one heard in the film, except for maybe All You Need Is Love. My favorite has always been Eleanor Rigby, which I think is one of the most hypnotically sad songs I've ever heard. There's also All Together Now, When I'm 64, and Nowhere Man. That last one spawned the creation of the character Jeremy, a "nobody" (another fuzzball) who speaks in rhyme to hide the fact that he isn't intelligent, writes reviews of his own books, and makes all his nowhere plans for nobody. Isn't he a bit like you and me?

The really tricky thing about explaining to anyone who doesn't know anything about Yellow Submarine that it's a good movie is because I still can't think of any specific reasons. I think it's important as one of the surviving, if seldom seen, milestones of a dead culture. I think it's great because it's just so much fun. There are some movies that don't have to tackle big issues or even sport an expensive production. When I watch the Beatles movies, they make me happy. Their music has had an influence on me and my generation in almost the same way it affected their own followers. In my opinion, the music and images of Yellow Submarine have proven their longevity. Here I am over 40 years later, and I'm still laughing, humming, and smiling. Maybe there was something to that love philosophy after all.