First, I'm a huge Beatles fan. Always have been and I'm an old guy (62). I've seen most, if not all, The Beatles films and was looking forward to this one. So much so, that I opted in for a month of Disney+ so that I could watch this and also the remastered "Let it Be" film.
While 1964 was a crucial year for The Beatles and important to what they meant to America, especially after the Kennedy assassination, I have to say that I preferred Ron Howard's spin much more as it was much more Beatle-centric to me. Beatles '64 kind of meanders all over the place and there are awkward segues into the psychology of Beatlemania (from later in the 60s) and just the kind of mood of the early 60s. Those segues are ridiculous and just out of place in this film. The clips don't age well and really had ZERO to do with John, Paul, George, and Ringo.
There were fan interviews (new and from 64) and that was ok, but there were other interviews that didn't make much sense to me. Jack Douglas's interview was good, but in the scheme of things, it was more about him and less about The Beatles, so a good interview, but out of place here.
The film has recent interviews with Paul and Ringo. Ringo seemed to add to the conversation with a few things I hadn't heard before. Paul just kind of fell back on his 'same old stories'. I mean, did we NEED to hear Paul give the talk about how the early hits were "From ME to YOU. SHE loves YOU. Please Please ME...". Good God, how many times can he recycle that? I really wish he'd open up a bit more. It was nice to see Ringo drum a bit and talk about the drum riser used on the Sullivan show, etc. Paul... eh, he really didn't add much and his F bomb, to me, was really out of place, especially on the Disney+ channel. Seemed a bit forced, too. The George and John interviews added more than Paul's.
Speaking of the Sullivan stuff- Why they didn't use the pristine video versions that came out about 10 years ago, I'll never know. The clips they used from the Sullivan show in Beatles '64 were much lower quality than what has been otherwise released.
I did enjoy the Ronnie Spector and Smokey Robinson interviews very much. The Beatles definitely beat the drum for the black American groups, so that was cool. Smokey singing 'Yesterday' was good too, but if this was about 1964, it was odd to see that which was at least a year later. Small point. It was cool to see George request "Got My Mind Set On You" on the phone. Prophetic.
I never realized how ANNOYING Murray the K was. He just kind of latched on and it was funny to see George say "we never knew how he got there...".
There was stuff that was later than '64 in the film too, which was kind of weird considering the film's title.
For me, there wasn't much I'd not seen before. The original films came out in the 80s or 90s as "The Beatles First Visit to the US" home video and, for my money, that is MUCH BETTER than this one. You can find it on the Internet Archive. Watch that as it's a much better representation.
It was nice to see how funny they were on the films of the train and in the hotel in New York. I'd forgotten that and Beatle Humor is such a big part of them. George masquerading as a train bartender was funny. I'd forgotten about that. John seemed a bit subdued and Paul, Ringo, and George were really hamming it up.
The NEXT film should be the restored Washington DC concert (which parts are shown here). They really improved the sound in the clips used in this film (though it's odd to see George singing "Roll Over Beethoven" on one mic, then move to another mic right in the middle of the lyric line. The reason he did this was because, in the original film, his mic was dead, so he jumped over to John's mic. Well, in this film, both mics mysteriously are working, so when he moves and you don't know this, you kind of go "Why did he move?". Peter Jackson restored that a bit too much. The dead mic and Ringo's funky drum riser kind of illustrate how UNready the US entertainment industry was for The Beatles as a live act.
All in all, it was 'OK' and worth a watch, but it really adds nothing new to The Beatles mythology.
