Working too hard to make psychological points that might be dishonest and are definitely unsubtle, "Nowhere Boy" offers a merely enjoyable origin myth of John Lennon - one whose familial melodrama justifies the movie's existence without quite illuminating its subject's more mysterious aspects.
At first, the movie seems bent on cute in-jokes hinting at the career about to be born. The camera lingers as young John careens past a sign reading "Strawberry Field"; the hero's prim, classics-loving aunt refuses to change the radio station by saying, "No, John, we do not turn Tchaikovsky over."
Thankfully, this tendency subsides as the movie's emotional content heats up. Young John, who has been reared by his stiff-upper-lip aunt Mimi (an excellent Kristin Scott Thomas) and jocular, affectionate Uncle George, is devastated when his uncle dies suddenly. Tracking down the mother who abandoned him, he initiates a cold war for his teenage soul - between an aunt who wants to keep him on the straight and narrow and a mother who will bend any rule to hold his attention.
The mysteries surrounding Julia, John's mum, are exaggerated to suit the needs of a screenplay (based on a memoir by Julia's eldest daughter) that wants to peg Lennon's fervor for rock music to their emotionally charged relationship. But truthful or not, this dynamic supplies all the movie's heat. As Julia, Anne-Marie Duff is an on-the-edge charmer, an immature mother who, not having lived around her growing son, has no concept where the boundary is between acceptable and icky affection, or simply doesn't care.
Julia dances flirtatiously to "Rocket 88," squeals with erotic pleasure when the two see Elvis Presley on a newsreel, and - in the movie's most blunt scene - shares John's first listen to an ill-gotten 45 of "I Put a Spell on You" while leaning suggestively against him on the couch.
Leaving behind the question of whether an adolescent boy in the '50s, especially one already flirting with dangerous girls, could possibly need an adult to tell him that rock 'n' roll was about fornication, all this confused sexual energy does provide a plausible motive for the boy's lust to be a performer. We watch the formation of his skiffle band the Quarrymen, see the arrival of a disciplined young music lover named Paul (amusingly, Thomas Sangster's McCartney comes across as the more truly cool young man in the pair), and witness the evolution of John's increasingly stylized pompadour.
Director Sam Taylor-Wood, better known as a still photographer, makes star Aaron Johnson look nothing like the geek he played in "Kick-Ass." Her camera sees him as almost hunky, and so it's unsurprising (though, given that their age difference is similar to that of Lennon and his mom, provocative) to learn that the two have become a couple and are having a child together.
Offscreen gossipworthiness aside, "Nowhere Boy" doesn't dig deep enough into proto-Beatles territory to satisfy fans. Though it is eventually touching (and, again, perhaps too tidy) in its resolution of thorny family dynamics, it never transcends its domestic formula sufficiently to feel like an authentic look at one of pop music's most fascinating characters.
'Nowhere Boy'
Our grade: B-
Genres: Biography, Docudrama
Running Time: 97 min
MPAA rating: R
Release Date: Dec 25, 2009
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