Die Linda McCartney Story

Gee, for a tele-movie this really deserves a bit more credit. Linda was an incredible person and this movie represents her character quite well. Though, as some have pointed out, it's unfortunate that the actress playing Linda has the physical looks more of Heather Mills, she actually does a wonderful job of portraying Linda's gentle yet headstrong, resilient and mother-earth ways. Gary Bakewell makes a wonderful Paul in both this and Backbeat, very convincing.

Overall I was super enthralled by the way this flowed and was left in tears at the end.

I would say the casting for John Lennon was absolutely horrendous though. Almost every scene which features John and the other Beatles is actually laughable... John throwing a rock through the McCartney front door and yelling "McCartney! Who the hell do you think you are" is actually among my favourite comedic moments of all time. But it doesn't ruin it for me, because the portrayal is actually so bad that it's unoffensive and hilarious. (btw if you're after a much better portrayal of John check out Phillip McQuillan Phoenix in In His Life: The John Lennon Story).

I didn't like this movie. First of all, I don't know what everyone likes about Elizabeth Mitchell. She annoyed me and she looks like an American TV film actress, not like Linda McCartney. Linda had a certain class about her that Mitchell doesn't have, she's just an over-acting actress while Linda was a personality. Second of all, I really disliked the way John and Yoko are being portrayed in this movie. They were people, a couple, just like Paul and Linda, not devils. And than there's this... Why is it called the Linda McCartney Story, when according to the movie, after she meets Paul, it's not her story at all anymore? Like people have said before, everything Linda did for animal rights and her veggie actions and all that, gets mentioned once. Once! In one sentence! Now excuse me, but that seems to me to be a huge part of the Linda McCartney story. After Linda meets Paul, it's his story that seems to matter the most in this movie. Like when he gets arrested in Japan. When they get back, Paul says to Linda "I know it was harder on you". And we, as viewers, should know that as well, since it's Linda's story. But we don't! We see more of Paul as he's in prison, we only get one brief shot of Linda and the kids in the hotel. I thought this was a badly told story that doesn't do any of the people involved just. I hope Paul never had to see it.

I am not very fond of biographical made-for-TV movies. But once in a while some surprises me. And I wanted to watch this movie from a very long time as I knew about Linda McCartney since I like some of the Beatles' songs.

The movie is about Linda McCartney, who in the 1960s and 1970s was a professional photographer who used to photograph lots of famous singers of the time. One day casually in 1967, in an English music club she meets the man of her life Paul McCartney. Then the story is told in flashbacks from when they married to her death in 1998. And in the meanwhile she met lots of famous artists and musicians.

The acting is good (despite the only famous cast member is George Segal as Lee Eastman). I also appreaciated that the movie wasn't too harsh when it portrayed Linda's last months of life. It focused on them in a peaceful way and I liked it this way. Not an exceptional biographical movie but still very good. And you don't have necessarily to be a Beatles fan for liking it.

I won't comment about the overall production values of this movie (other than to commend the acting jobs of all of the players), but as a documentary it really fails, and sells Linda McCartney very short. It could have been titled "The Mrs. Paul McCartney Story", or better yet, "The Mrs. Beatle Story".

Linda McCartney was a lifelong photographer of some repute, yet none of her photographs are shown or talked about. We get to see the break-up of the Beatles up-close, yet the details of Linda's life before and outside of her marriage to Paul McCartney are almost entirely omitted.

Unbelievably, Linda's work for animal issues and vegetarianism are barely mentioned. These activities are what defined Linda McCartney (or, at least, how she defined herself), yet more time is devoted to reproducing Beatles recording sessions than to dealing with them. Linda stated during her lifetime that motherhood was her most important job, but we see virtually none of her relationships with her four children.

This movie was a real disappointment. Less a tribute than an insult to the innovative and influential Linda McCartney.

When this movie was first broadcast, I refused to watch it. I assumed it would be insulting to the memory of Linda. I assumed they would have a lot of long, personal conversations between the two leads, that no one could really know about, except the two of them, themselves. If it were written by Paul, then I could believe it, but as it was not, I did not want to get upset by a lot of baseless fabrications.

So, four years later, (last night), it appeared on the Lifetime channel, and as I was unable to sleep, I decided to watch it.

It was not as bad as I thought, but I was disappointed that it told nothing of all of Linda's accomplishments, on her own. I thought the lead actors did a good enough job, weighted down as they were, by the material.

The obligatory scene where Linda gets upset by the bad press after she appears with Wings seemed included just to prove that it was not HER idea to force herself on stage. I was at their first concert at the Cow Palace, in 1976, and even though I was one of those girls who mourned his marriage, I couldn't help being caught up by their obvious love for each other. The local press was merciless, and I began to really feel for her, then.

She was a great mother but they barely touched on that. Her photography was excellent, but again, it was not given much more attention than as a way to accomplish her apparent goal of sleeping with rock stars. So what if she was a groupie? It was a short period in her life, and certainly not the most interesting part of her life story. Her photo of Paul in "Rock and Other Four Letter Words", is one of a kind. I believe she said she took it as she told him she was pregnant. Hilarious! That would have been a good scene in the movie.

They should have shown how they raised their kids to be good, decent people.

There is a momentary look at a car taking them to school, but that scene is actually focused on John's death, and the McCartney kids are just decoration.

What happened to their quote, "We don't eat anything that has a face"?

When the movie ended, I was sad for her, because of what I already know about her, not because of anything in the movie.