Nowhere Boy Review
By David Kempler
This Boy
He's a real Nowhere Man, sitting in his nowhere land, making all his nowhere plans for nobody. Just another in a series of interesting words from some pretty fair songs penned by a little quartet named the Beatles. You've probably heard of them.
Anyway, it's difficult to do a biopic about a legend, particularly one as larger-than-life as John Lennon. Producing one that portrayed an adult Lennon probably couldn't work, because the actor would get swallowed up by the role and the best you could hope for would be a nice impression. Thankfully, Sam Taylor-Wood doesn't attempt that in "Nowhere Boy". Instead he brings us Lennon as a fifteen-year-old before he could even imagine the notions of Beatles, Yoko, Ed Sullivan, Beatlemania, the Maharishi, and a host of other things that were to follow in his life.
Instead we get a glimpse into a teenage version of the future music icon, and setting aside for a moment how accurate it is, it feels accurate, and that's even more important. Aaron Johnson plays the young John and you believe that it could be him. Surrounded by a nice cast, and armed with a solid, if unspectacular script, Johnson convinces us that we might be peering into the past and watching the future great.
As the story goes here, John is a rebellious, but not particular terrible, young man. He loves music and ladies. Nothing else is on his radar. In that way he is fairly normal. John lives with his aunt, Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas), a proper woman who has been left with the chore of raising John. John's mother, Julia (Anne-Marie Duff), is an older, wild child and it is when John reunites with her, that her good and bad characteristics become apparent to John and us.
Kristin Scott Thomas does a great job, as is her norm, and Duff holds up her end of the bargain. By keeping it low-key, and by not banging drums on the horizon of the greatness to come, Wood has created a world that feels real, and in a biopic, you can't ask for much more. When I heard what "Nowhere Boy" was about, I probably winced, because I couldn't imagine that this could be an entertaining thing. I envisioned hype and a wink that said that big things are coming, just you wait. Instead I got something far more rewarding. "Nowhere Boy" is a well-executed, un-melodramatic, sweet, fun, dramatic, and fulfilling experience. Can you imagine?
