I first remember excitedly talking about this film around this time last year. Strangely, its theatrical release came & went without a glimpse from yours truly. It be’s that way sometimes.

NOWHERE BOY is the story of a young John Lennon (Aaron Johnson). He’s a teenaged hellion who has little use for school, and is living a simple life where he is being raised by his aunt Mimi (Katherine Scott Thomas). Early on in the film, he’s thrown a curve as he catches a glimpse of his birth mother…a woman he doesn’t really know. he soon finds himself torn between a kinship with his flighty mother, and his love and respect for the aunt who has cared for him all this time. Adding to the distraction is the fact that he’s taken a shining to music, where he’s getting by with a little help from his friends.

As a person who idolizes John Lennon, you’d think that this film would get me drunk with fanboy love. Yet I sadly sit here quite sober. It’s not that the film did anything wrong…it’s just that it didn’t seem anxious to do anything particularly special. It’s all told on a small scale, content to play things safe and never attempting to elevate itself to something special. This isn’t a good idea, since half of this film was telling me things I already knew.

In short, as a bio-pic, the movie doesn’t succeed, since you wouldn’t care a lick about what happens if you don’t know who young John goes on to be.

While I don’t think the world needs another rock biography, the movie might have worked better if it had stuck to the musical anger and taken the emphasis off John’s family. It’s here where the film is filled with the greatest amount of joy – fitting since that seems to be the mood shared by John and his new mates Paul and George. We hear track after track of the music that inspired them to pick up guitars, and immediately understand the attraction. Of course the hitch there is that for anybody interested, these tales are already legend.

But in a cute move, that legend is actually never directly addressed. The word “Beatles” is never uttered once (and wryly dodged in the film’s final scene), and not one note of their music is ever played. It’s John’s story, not theirs, and at the age we meet him and the rest of his friends, they were still a far cry from creating anything that would cement their iconic status. Thus the film is right to omit their music. Actually, that’s a lie. We do hear precisely one note of Beatles’ in the film. (Three guesses which song).

The film has glimmers of charm, but never fulfills its promise. It made for a decent enough rental, but felt ultimately disappointing for what it could have been. In short, it’s a sorry excuse for the story of “The Clever One”.