Old news but once more with feeling: Sam Mendes’ The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event, which won’t open until 4.7.28 or a bit less than two years hence, has already sunk itself with the almost surreal casting choices, the common factor being that the four lads are played by a quartet of way-too-old guys.
If you don’t know the difference between guys in their early to mid 20s and dudes in their early to mid 30s, I can’t help you.
One, the just-shy-of-middle-aged, clearly-no-spring-chicken-ish Paul Mescal (30 going on 38) playing the 21 year old Paul McCartney during the February ‘64 Beatles arrival, the mid ’60s Rubber Soul / Revolver era and the Abbey Road finale blah blah. (Not to mention Mescal’s impossible hawk nose and pointy chin-chin.) Two, the zero-resemblance-factor, close-to-ginger-haired Joseph Quinn, 32, as George Harrison, the baby of the group in real life. Three, the warlock-eyed Barry Keohgan, 34, as the decade-younger Richard Starkey (born in July 1940, 23 in early ‘64). Four, the basketball-player-sized Harris Dickinson as the five-foot-tennish John Lennon.