Review: Nowhere Boy

Review: Nowhere Boy

Rating: ***

Nonna's Rating: $$

Rotten Tomatoes: 82%

Audience: 70%

I admit I was predisposed to love this movie. It is, after all, about John Lennon. But then, my expectations were high too. I wasn't disappointed. The film focuses on Lennon's late teenage years: between being the bad boy 15-year-old at school and his sojourn with Paul and George to Hamburg from 1960-62. They are, needless to say, formative years -- years complicated by Lennon's discovery that his birth mother lived close to him and that she was alternately a free spirit and a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Lennon's adolescence is, in a word, troubled. He is recalcitrant, obnoxious, ungrateful, and arrogant. He is is also painfully insecure, desperate for his mother's love, and delightfully witty. The film does not present us with a teenage Beatle; instead it gives us glimpses and hints of the brilliant, creative man he would become. Kristin Scott-Thomas delivers a convincing performance as Lennon's Aunt/Mother Mimi, and Aaron Johnson as Lennon grows into the man Lennon would become in a subtle performance. Thomas Sangster (Liam Neeson's young blonde son in Love Actually) joins the film near the end as 15-year-old Paul McCartney. In contrast to Lennon, he projects solid confidence in his abiltities and self-assurance. I thought Paul could never have looked that young, but, at the end we see actual pictures from that time period and Sangster looks remarkably similar. Not a great movie, but definitely worth your time.

Nonna's Ratings:

$$$$ = Worth paying the Friday evening price
$$$= Worth paying the Matinee price

$$= Worth a rental
$ = Wait for cable
# = Skip it