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Yellow Submarine (1968)

tomatometer

95

Average Rating: 7.7/10
Reviews Counted: 37
Fresh: 35 | Rotten: 2

A joyful, phantasmagoric blend of colorful animation and the music of the Beatles, Yellow Submarine is delightful (and occasionally melancholy) family fare.

88

Average Rating: 7.2/10
Critic Reviews: 8
Fresh: 7 | Rotten: 1

A joyful, phantasmagoric blend of colorful animation and the music of the Beatles, Yellow Submarine is delightful (and occasionally melancholy) family fare.

audience

82

liked it
Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 40,931

My Rating

Movie Info

Yellow Submarine is an animated meandering journey filled with puns and dry British humor, where psychedelic music videos take precedent over any linear story. What little there is of a plot, however, concerns a vibrantly colored place called Pepperland that resembles the album cover for Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band come to life. The swirling animation is a mixture of pop-culture images and modern artistic styles brought loosely together with a naïve antiwar message and some clever

Sep 14, 1999

MGM Home Entertainment

Cast

All Critics (39) | Top Critics (8) | Fresh (37) | Rotten (2) | DVD (12)

If the result seems less a coherent story than a two-hour pot high, Submarine is still a breakthrough combination of the feature film and art's intimacy with the unconscious.

September 4, 2008 Full Review Source: TIME Magazine | Comment
TIME Magazine
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Here are all the ingredients of a novel entertainment.

September 6, 2007 Full Review Source: Variety | Comment
Variety
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This 1968 Beatles musical gets somewhat plot heavy near the end, but it's a marvel of innocence and free association, blending several animation techniques in a loose narrative full of gentle bad puns and flowing visual segues.

September 6, 2007 Full Review Source: Chicago Reader | Comment
Chicago Reader
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The animation is imaginatively conceived, but stiffly executed.

September 6, 2007 Full Review Source: Chicago Reader | Comments (5)
Chicago Reader
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Yellow Submarine is a family movie in the truest sense.

May 20, 2003 Full Review Source: New York Times | Comment
New York Times
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Almost 20 years after its release, this charming fable chronicling the Beatles' battles to save Pepperland from the Blue Meanies is one of the best testaments ever to the redeeming value of good music.

January 1, 2000 Full Review Source: Washington Post | Comment
Washington Post
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Beatles classic with great animation, music.

December 29, 2010 Full Review Source: Common Sense Media | Comment
Common Sense Media

Truly one of the finest animated films and one of the finest cinematic musicals of all time.

September 19, 2010 Full Review Source: Antagony & Ecstasy | Comment
Antagony & Ecstasy

A garish, gorgeous example of pop art at its finest.

September 2, 2008 Full Review Source: Empire Magazine | Comment
Empire Magazine

There's a quiet note of melancholy in much of this material, which is much more persuasive and concrete than the larky, intoxicating pleasure usually claimed for the film.

September 2, 2008 Full Review Source: Film4 | Comment

A zesty, satisfying celebration of animation, fantasy, love, and the Beatles that pleases the eyes as much as the ears.

September 6, 2007 Full Review Source: TV Guide's Movie Guide | Comment
TV Guide's Movie Guide

There's such a wide disparity of graphic styles from sequence to sequence. Some of them, though, still look terrific.

June 24, 2006 Full Review Source: Time Out | Comment

Not a splendid time for all.

September 9, 2005 Comments (4)

A movie so joyous (and mildly demented) as to rewrite the rules of what a movie can be.

September 6, 2005 Comment
ÜberCiné

Inventive animated feature. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

October 24, 2003 Comment
Sun Newspapers of Cleveland

Visually inventive.

March 10, 2003 Full Review Source: Austin Chronicle | Comment
Austin Chronicle
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for Yellow Submarine

Amazing illustration, and let me repeat, AMAZING ILLUSTRATION. The animation pervades the film and grants us the psychedelic experience of a lifetime accompanied by the timeless music of The Beatles and a very trippy plot. Sadly, the plot is more suited to young children and those who are influenced by hallucinogenic

August 1, 2008
Colin Montgomery

Super Reviewer

I don't mean to sound trite, but they should just rename this film "Drug Trip: The Movie" and be done with it. Seriously.Ok then, with that out of the way, I must say, this is a bit of a hard film to really rate or review. Obviously I'm gonna have to do just that, but it is a bit difficult for me.This fantasy centered

April 16, 2007
cosmo313
Chris Weber

Super Reviewer

    1. John: Break the glass.
    2. George: We can't!
    3. Paul: It's Beatle-proof.
    4. John: Nothing is Beatle-proof!
    – Submitted by Rocio R (2 months ago)
    1. Nowhere Man: Ad hoc, ad loc, and quid pro quo! So little time! So much to know!
    – Submitted by Rocio R (2 months ago)
    1. George: It's all in the mind, you know!
    – Submitted by Rocio R (2 months ago)
    1. Ringo/Chief Blue Meanie: I got a hole in me pocket!
    – Submitted by Dana F (7 months ago)

Latest News for Yellow Submarine

December 20, 2011:
Remembering the Lord of the Rings Movie That Might Have Been
Once upon a time, the Beatles approached Stanley Kubrick about directing them in an adaptation of...

January 12, 2010:
Fab Four in Talks for Yellow Submarine
Ladies and gentlemen, meet your mo-cap Fab Four: Cary Elwes, Dean Lennox Kelly, Peter Serafinowicz...

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Foreign Titles

  • Yellow Submarine (1968) (DE)
  • Yellow Submarine (1968) (UK)
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