Yesterday

Danny Boyle directing a Richard Curtis screenplay is a combination that reads on paper as either inspired or incompatible, and Yesterday is both. Made for Working Title and released in 2019, it took around $153 million worldwide on a $26 million budget — a hit, and the last film Boyle completed before returning to the 28 Days Later world.

Himesh Patel, previously best known from EastEnders, plays Jack Malik, a Lowestoft busker who wakes after a worldwide blackout to discover the Beatles have been erased from history and their catalogue is his for the taking. Lily James plays Ellie, the schoolteacher who has managed him for a decade; Kate McKinnon arrives as a Los Angeles manager and walks off with every scene she is in. Patel performs the songs himself, live on set.

Reviews were mixed — the premise raises questions about art, authorship and luck that the film mostly declines to pursue in favour of Curtis's romantic machinery — and it holds around 62% on Rotten Tomatoes. What it has instead is charm and the songs, played straight, by an actor who can sing them. Best approached as a comedy with an unusually good soundtrack rather than as the thought experiment its setup promises.