The Linda McCartney Story

You already know Linda McCartney's story don't you? Well, of course you do. Did you want to watch this movie to learn the whole story? Sorry, no such luck! This meandering rambling, shallow, no warmth, no depth 'story' will not tell you anything you did not already hear in the media over the years. Her activism? Her vegetarianism? None of that seemed to be in this story, tho' it was mentioned in the advertising trailers, which, by the way, were not in the movie. This 'story' jumped back & forth, back & forth from decade to decade to decade: o, am I getting dizzy! The way that you could tell you were in a different decade was the fact the Linda & Paul went from long hair to short hair back to long hair & back again. O, there seemed to be some information bubbles that were in the tiniest font possible which stayed so long on the screen that if you blinked it is gone! The producers ALL seem to ASSUME that everyone can see 20/20 just like they do (NOT!) Why do these people assume that the 70 million member strong Babyboomers who have now all become 40 years old & up, who now all have to wear corrective lenses, if they did not before like the rest of us, can read this slightly momentarily brief second on the screen information bubbles in the worst contrast between colors to be able to read the information that also hopped from corner to corner to corner? The most love & depth of this movie is the 'nude love scene' (which added nothing to the story, except turns you off)with the Jim Morrison character, whom you knew she did not love in the 1st place. The story had no plot, nowhere to go. You already know that Linda had died a couple of years ago. The 'plot' was so 'well-developed' that you could not tell that Linda & Paul had more than 2 children, since that is all they showed until the very last scene when the family was @ the graveside. If you really, really want to know the whole love story, you have to wait until Paul writes the book, if he will. Well, so much for the 'hollywood' version!

Well, Gary Bakewell looks a lot like Paul McCartney.

Other than that...

This movie lacks substance. The film is set up as a series of flashbacks while Linda is coping with breast cancer in the 1990s, so the ultimate doom of Linda kind of puts a downer on the whole movie. But the biggest problem is that it rushes up to the parts where Paul is courting Linda, then loses it's steam pretty quickly once Paul and Linda get married and the Beatles break up. The years spent as a photographer, with Wings, as an animal rights activist, even her time spent as a mother are barely skimmed over, so we the audience, are left feeling kind of gypped of at least 25 years worth of valuable information. Granted, a happy and stable marriage does not make much juicy filler for a movie, but we really don't get much of a feel for who this woman was, but rather who she was for Paul McCartney.

That said, I thought the actors did a decent job, considering the lack of material; there was a nice chemistry between Bakewell and Elizabeth Mitchell. And if you did know anything about the real Linda McCartney, watching her portrayed in her final days was touching. A nice film to have on in the background while you're busy doing other things. But as a film in it's own right, it's just not strong enough material to hold much interest.

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.

This was such a great movie, I am left speechless. Elizabeth Mitchell and Gary Bakewell (once again portraying Paul with sheer brilliance) make this a movie not to miss! The love these two people shared is so brilliantly displayed by these two leads as is the conflict in the later years of the Fab Four. You do NOT want to miss this one!

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).