An Earlier Nowhere Boy
As a young boy John Lennon (Philip McQuillan) loved music and set his eyes on a guitar you could send off for which his mum and Aunt Mimi agree to get him with his mum teaching him how to play. Over the years John forms various bands till eventually he joins forces with Stuart Sutcliffe (Lee Williams), Pete Best (Scot Williams), George Harrison (Mark Rice-Oxley), and Paul McCartney (Daniel McGowan) to form The Beatles.
I am no expert on The Beatles, I know their music and what I know about the band I have learned from watching the various movies about them and there have been a few. As such I will say right up front I don't know how accurate to the fact this made for TV movie from 2000 is although found myself spotting various differences in the storyline to what I have learned from the other movies. But in truth my desire to watch "In His Life: The John Lennon Story" is out of entertainment rather than looking for realism.
Now in a way just watching "In His Life: The John Lennon Story" to be entertained is probably the best way to go about it as right from the start I struggled to be convinced that Philip McQuillen was young John Lennon. The look, the accent, the attitude all came across as forced to the point that I was tempted to walk away. It is not just McQuillen who came across as forced and frankly all the young actors picked to play the young Beatles didn't ring true whilst other characters such as John's mum came across like a stereotype rather than a real person.
Anyway once you get beyond the various issues and the acting is not the only one what you have is a semi interesting look at the life of young John Lennon. We see the issues he had living with an Aunt who didn't support him when it came to music, the troubles he had at school before heading to art college, the meeting with McCartney when Lennon was with the Quarrymen and so on. Unfortunately it is all ground which is covered in other movies about The Beatles and covered a lot better by those other movies which means this fails to offer up anything new.
What this all boils down to is that "In His Life: The John Lennon Story" is okay, it has nice pacing and some nice music. But it is a movie which not only suffers because of the better movies which have been made about The Beatles but also because from a character point of view it fails to convince you are watching the young John Lennon or the other members of The Beatles.
