Made mostly of archival footage... most of it recoloured, this is quite a nice documentary... I was expecting a bit more though. Aside a few bits here and there, there doesn't seem to be that much that's new... even if there is... director Ron Howard says there is. What could be more familiar than The Beatles though? Certainly not an easy story to breathe new life into! All that said, 50 years on from the time, it remains quite incredible to watch the furore that they created, just how new, fresh, raw they were. So disregard my initial thoughts, forget pointless analysis, it's The Beatles! The greatest band the world has ever seen. Just enjoy it and lose yourself if only for a 106 minutes.

Why are the Beatles still, almost sixty years after they originally formed, the most famous rock band in the world? Partly because they came in at the dawn of (and helped shape) youth culture - Beatlemania was an unprecedented phenomenon. But also because they came in at the dawn of (and helped shape) modern popular music - and did so both initially as purveyors of superior, catchy, but essentially lightwieght music, and then later as genuine artists, who widened the vocabulary of music itself. And they did all this in just ten years. Ron Howard's documentary tells the first half of the story, in which they became the world's biggest touring band, but also began a transition that was to lead them to their greatest works, but also off the live stage. It's not a bad film, with plenty of songs and concert clips, interviews old and new, and it's both interesting and delightful to see the freshness and honesty of the band in their early days: when the road to superstardom was unmapped, they seem human in a way that few of their successors do. The "we all loved each other" story is probably only part of the truth - but it's broadly plausible as an account of the early years in a way it wouldn't be of the later ones. It's hard to imagine there will ever be another group that achieves the same impact on music and the world.

After more than 50 years, there's not much new that can be said about the birth and rise of the "Beatlemania" phenomenon, so don't expect any great surprises or revelations in Ron Howard's documentary of the Beatles touring period. The footage is great as are the interviews (even the 'celebrity' interviews such as Whoopi Goldberg add something to the story). No reason to suggest Beatle's fans watch this new addition to Beatle-nostalgia (they will), but the movie's worth viewing by anyone who remembers the era or likes the music (or, of course, both). I still find it sad to watch images of John Lennon, knowing how pointless and untimely his death was.

...and in some ways, they still are.This is a group that played their last live (paying) show over 50 years ago, and they get still get a documentary movie made about their formative years which is released in theaters in 2016 and does respectable business.I was all of seven years old when they quit touring, and don't remember it happening in real time. So even though I've seen a bunch of these clips "snippeted" in the last half-century of my life, many of the behind the scenes day-to-day nuggets were all new, and well worth a viewing.To see the fan-love of the tours (U.S. and around the world) is still pretty unbelievable to look at. It was a different era, so instead of online mass adoration, EVERYBODY (REALLY, EVERYBODY!) JUST WENT OUT & SHOWED UP TO CATCH ANY KIND OF GLIMPSE THEY COULD GET OF THEM!This phenomenon probably wouldn't still be looked at with this much reverence today if the music doesn't stand the test of time. BUT IT DOES.If you like the sixties, or love the Beatles, you gotta' see this one.