Entertainment

IT GOES NOWHERE, MAN

I saw a film today, oh boy. “Across the Uni verse” is an interesting failure, not a fascinat ing one. Its makers are going to be fixing a hole in the ledgers.

Still, if you’re going to flop, you might as well do it big. Director Julie Taymor does it huge with 30 maniacally reconceived Beatles numbers thrown into a Tilt-A-Whirl of 1960s images.

Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood) – a rich girl whose boyfriend has just been shipped off to Vietnam – and Jude (Jim Sturgess), a Liverpudlian who has come to the States, wind up sharing a New York City loft. Other roommates include Lucy’s Princeton playboy brother Max (Joe Anderson), a Hendrixian guitar player called JoJo, and a cheerleader from Ohio. How did she get here? “She came in through the bathroom window,” explains Jude.

Taymor has some gorgeous visions. In a pleading near-whisper, the cheerleader sings “I Want To Hold Your Hand” against a ballet of football tackling as she gazes upon her loved one – another girl. Sweet heartbreak, but the plot thread attached to it, like many others, winds up dangling in the breeze.

Nonsinger (also non-

talent) Eddie Izzard plays Mr. Kite in an animated psychedelic-circus sequence that should have been cut. And shredded. And buried. Under concrete.

It would have fit well into the equally bizarre 1978 Bee Gees flop “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” The two flicks would make for an ideal double-feature to be giggled at by college students in smoke-filled (but tobacco-free) rooms.

There’s a sublime appearance by Joe Cocker, and five Salma Hayeks, in naughty-nurse mode, are sexy and disturbing singing “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” in a VA hospital. But Bono, looking like a gay biker, serves up campy bluster singing “I Am the Walrus.” Randomly, the Princeton student drops out of school, making him eligible for the draft – and the audience eligible for lots of napalm and naked Vietnamese. His trials lead to a Vietnam-themed “Strawberry Fields Forever” that grabbed me by the eyestalks, as did a gospel “Let It Be” set amidst the Detroit riots.

Taymor approaches the mad genius of a searing rock musical, “Pink Floyd the Wall,” by staging “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” as a bitter satire starring Uncle Sam. Yet even in this dazzler, Taymor nearly ruins the effect by having her masked drill sergeants bust out Michael-Jackson-in-“Thriller” dance moves. The prospect of being flung into Vietnam could make a strong man crumble, but no one was ever scared by jazz hands.

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE

** 1/2

Should have known better.

Running time: 131 minutes. Rated PG-13 (nudity, sexuality, violence, profanity, drug use). At the Lincoln Square, the Empire, the Union Square.