1. There's brilliance in there, that's undeniable -- and if you're in the right mood, that will be all you need.
2. Something that would have been a bad idea for an Off-Broadway concept show has inexplicably been turned into a bloated two hour and eleven minute movie musical.
3. A Taymor triumph. A mélange of creativity using the Beatles music to express a generation in full. The fresh interpretation of the music is perfection.
4. You could make the same movie using the music of Huey Lewis. And most likely a less embarrassing one.
5. Julie Taymor has delivered an audacious, idiosyncratic creation that plays like a riff on Hair with Fab Four cachet, stretching a thin love story across one tumultuous decade.
6. A lush, interesting mix of media - song, old-school psychedelic effects, acting & dance. It's a musical tribute to Rock's most loved British band that plays out in America.
7. Despite the film's coda, the classic All You Need Is Love, you'll need more than love--like patience and tolerance-- for Taymor's overlong (133 minutes), self-indulgent, excessively stylized musical collage, hampered by generic and banal narrative.
8. After Hair, Hairspray and the mass marketing of tie-dye, can the '60s be shrunk to fit any further? Yes, indeed.
9. Every little thing Julie Taymor does is magic.
10. Julie Taymor's love-it-or-hate-it musical is hugely ambitious but it works brilliantly, thanks to strong performances, a fantastic script, terrifically integrated songs and Taymor's inspired direction.
Based on these individual reviews, what is the critic consensus?
Psychedelic musical numbers can't mask Across the Universe's clichéd love story and uninteresting characters.