3 1/2 stars
You need to know right up front that I'm a music junkie %u2013 a person who cannot stand to go very long without hearing music I love.
Although I count hundreds of musicians among my favorites, The Beatles are in my top 10. So it's no small wonder why I loved "Across the Universe," a psychedelic fantasy of an era.
There's no real story line here. The movie, which is a musical if you want to pigeonhole it into a genre, is set in the 1960s in Liverpool, where dock worker Jude (Jim Sturgess, who closely resembles a young Paul McCartney) is planning a journey. Soon he has arrived in the United States to find his father, whom he never has met.
He isn't a college student, but begins to hang around the university where his father works. There he befriends Max (Joe Anderson), who is on the lam with a bunch of his rowdy friends after being caught in a prank.
Max and Jude become good friends, and Jude ends up meeting the members of Max's family, which includes Max's sister Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood). Lucy has lost her boyfriend in the Vietnam War, and she turns to Max for comfort. They become involved with a couple of musicians who obviously are based on the late Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix.
The three end up being touched directly by the war. Max is drafted, and Lucy begins slipping away from Jude because she is so devoted to her protest work.
The psychedelic scenes include several wild dance numbers, including an Uncle-Sam-based "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" sequence and a terrific bowling-alley scene set to "I've Just Seen a Face." The performers sing their own vocals, and it works %u2013 Wood's vocals, in particular, are pretty and pleasing to the ear.
Cameos include comedian Eddie Izzard, Bono, Joe Cocker and Salma Hayek.
The show paints a colorful, dizzying picture of the '60s and characters that bear names from Beatles songs. Prudence, for example, comes in through the bathroom window.
This is an "art film," full of visual texture and music rather than character development and plot. It's a clever way to depict the turmoil and joy of the era and it's a tribute to the band whose music is timeless.

Running time: Two hours and 13 minutes.
Rated: PG-13 for nudity, foul language and sexual situations.
Stars: Evan Rachel Wood, Jim Sturgess, Joe Anderson, Dana Fuchs, Martin Luther and T.V. Carpio.
Director: Julie Taymor.
Screenwriters: Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais.