‘Yesterday’ – Thame Cinema 4 All – Thame

JACK is a stuggling musician trying to make a go of things in Lowestoft, from one mediocre pub gig to another, with appearances at the odd festival playing to audiences of two or three.

He has decided on more than one occasion to pack it in and get real, but his ‘manager’ and best friend Ellie – who would like to be more to Jack than that – keeps the faith and encourages him not to give up on his dreams. One evening, he is cycling home when a freak global blackout happens, thrusting him and his bike into an oncoming bus. He survives, and wakes up intact but for a couple of teeth.

But the world he wakes up into has shifted slightly on its axis: when he picks up his guitar in the pub beer garden one afternoon and absent-mindedly picks out Yesterday on his acoustic guitar, his friends pretend they have never heard it. Never heard of Lennon or Macartney, never heard of The Beatles. He goes home and tries to find it on Google. Images of shiny black beetles appear. And when he tries out a few Beatles numbers at his gigs he soon finds himself an overnight sensation, hailed as a breakthough songwriter, a once in a generation musical genius.

Global domination beckons: fame beyond his imaginings, wealth, women, accolades. But is it OK, he keeps asking himself? He is basically a liar and a plagiarist. Surely he will meet some sort of grizzly come-uppance.

Danny Boyle’s gorgeous feelgood rom com might be based on a screenplay by the master of that genre, Richard Curtis. But it is a bit more rough round the edges, a bit more gritty and complex than you might expect thanks to the dubious morality of our hero Jack, who we root for even though we know he is faking it. And the film manages to pull off a small miracle: it persuades you that you are hearing those songs for the first time, and to marvel at what really was a miraculous musical output, song after song after song.

With a cracking cast, including a satisfyingly self-deprecating cameo from Ed Sheeran, this will put a big sunny smile on your face. View the trailer here.

Film: Yesterday – Saturday. December 28, 8 pm (Doors open 7.30pm) – Thame Players Theatre, Nelson Street, Thame. Licenced bar

INFO: UK 2019, 113 minutes, 12 certificate – Directed by Danny Boyle, Starring Himesh Patel, Lily James, Joel Fry, Kate McKinnon, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Meera Syal, Ed Sheeran