Crazy Day

A cast of unknowns with a young Robert Zemeckis as director made a movie as memorable as the Beatles themselves! Especially Wendie Jo Sperber, who is the most hysterical of all the fans, and Nancy Allen, who actually gains access to their hotel room at one point. This movie is very funny and it helps if you're an admirer of the Beatles, but anyone would like it.

There is a scene that takes place about three quarters of the way through this film that is not only one of the ten funniest scenes in the history of movie-making, but probably does even a better job of summing up what the year 1964 was all about than Dr. Strangelove. It involves Christian Juttner, who must confront an evil looking one-eyed barber, and a snake-like pair of electric clippers.

And forget Burt Lancaster & Deborah Kerr on the beach in "From Here To Eternity." For sheer lustful passion, that scene doesn't even come close to Nancy Allen's roll in the hay with Paul McCartney's Hoffner bass.

A flawless masterpiece!

I remember seeing this film at three-thirty in the morning when I couldn't sleep and I was in the sixth grade. It was really funny and kept me awake until about five fifteen in the morning...and I had school to go to! Needless to say I never went back to sleep, and at school all I could talk about was this film. The film, directed by Robert Zemekis and produced by Steven Spielberg, is about the pandemonium that ensued when the Beatles came to America to play for Ed Sullivan. Naturally, this film being about teenagers, it appealed to a younger crowd, but an older one at this day and age, as it was the older crowd who were alive and witnessed this chaos. Nancy Allen and Theresa Saldana are great(what ever happened to her?) Wendie Jo Sperber as usual does a fine comedic performance, while Mark McClure and Eddie Deezen have funny little side roles. Written by Bob Gale and Zemeckis, this one is sure to be a laugh riot, almost as laugh out loud as 1941, but with more real life issues and realistic tones. A Funny Film!

JFK had been assassinated a couple of months earlier and the country was still in a somewhat depressed mood. However a new rock & roll group from England was gaining interest. Then on one memorable weekend in Feb of 64 they arrived in the states to appear where else? On the Ed Sullivan Show. After that week-end the country perked up and began to smile a bit more. This film while essentially intended to be zany does pretty fairly capture the mood of what went on. The Beatles played two sets that night on Sullivan and this film showed the program ending after they came on and did their thing which wasn't totally accurate but so what. One interesting feature is that the Beatles faces are never seen except with actual footage of the original February 9th broadcast and even then it's on the screen of the television cameras as they captured them on the stage.

The most important thing about the Beatles arriving in America in January of 1964 to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show is not even mentioned in I Wanna Hold Your Hand. The fact is we were a nation in mourning with our young president slain. The Beatles coming to America was the first thing as a country we got any kind of excited about.

I Wanna Hold Your Hand is the story of four young teen girls from New Jersey, Nancy Allen, Wendy Jo Sperber, Susan Kendall Newman, and Theresa Saldana and their quest to see the Beatles up close and personal and maybe get tickets to the Ed Sullivan Show. They inveigle young Marc McClure who is the son of a funeral director in their town to use his limousine, the better to get up to the hotel the Liverpool Lads are staying at. They also pick up Bobby DiCicco who hates the Beatles as foreigners and who are taking the place of his idols the Four Seasons. He's on a mission of his own to halt the broadcast by fair or foul. As history tells us he failed, but you got to see what intervened to prevent him from carrying out his task.

Best in the film is Wendy Jo Sperber, the Beatlemaniac on steroids. She is hilarious in her attempts to get to her Fab Four. Most annoying in the film is Eddie Deezen the nerdy kid she teams up with in her quest. I mean he comes off like SuperNerd, his lack of social graces is painful to watch.

Pieces and whole songs from The Beatles are heard throughout the film, fans will love it. Robert Zemeckis who directed and wrote the film had a real feel for those crazy times in New York in 1964.