I'm not convinced by the necessity of a biopic about the young John Lennon, but if such a thing has to be made, Nowhere Boy looks like a relatively decent way to do it:
Aaron Johnson, acting out in ways that are somewhat less dramatic than the methods his character chose in Kick-Ass seems much more convincingly angry and awkward here--there was something about his gait and gawkiness in Kick-Ass that seemed obviously put-on. There's a difference between blankness that's a means of withdrawal from the worst pains of the world, and blankness because there's really nothing there, and this movie seems more about the former than the latter. I think Johnson has promise, and I'll see this, if only because I'm interested in seeing whether he emerges as a significant talent. I'm also sort of charmed by the idea that Thomas Sangster, even if his love-lorn kiddo in Love, Actually has given birth to sickly-sweet imitators, has grown up enough to play a quite young Paul McCartney.
But who am I kidding? Even if I don't see the real necessity of this, I own the Beatles Anthology albums on cassette, I'm still the little girl who had my grandmother tape the documentary for me because it aired past my bedtime, who went out for her first night clubbing in England in a Yellow Submarine t-shirt (I was hopeless). Homages like this, reconstructed relics like "Free As A Bird," may be corny, they may even be travesties, but they keep John Lennon's memory alive, and it's hard to begrudge that particular goal, less self-evident than I think it seems: