The Beatles get back to where they once belonged in Ron Howard’s hard-working documentary

REVIEW: The Beatles go back to their roots in Ron Howard’s music-filled documentary, which is worth a look for any fan of the band.

Flashback ... The Beatles in Ron Howard’s documentary.

THE BEATLES: EIGHT DAYS A WEEK — THE TOURING YEARS

Three and a half stars

Director Ron Howard

Starring Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Whoopi Goldberg

Rating M

Running time 138 minutes

Verdict Greatest hits

Is there anything new to say about The Beatles, a band whose entrails have been pored over for more than 50 years?

Probably not.

But Ron Howard’s feature-length documentary, the first to be authorised by the band since its breakup in 1970, offers audiences a well-paced and thoroughly engaging recap.

As the title suggests, Eight Days A Week concentrates on the early touring years, from the fledgling musicians’ performances in Liverpool’s “intimate” Cavern Club to their crazy final concert in San Francisco in 1966.

Unable to hear themselves play, herded into a windowless truck for a safety, it’s little wonder they voted to put a halt to live performances after that.

Howard has access to a treasure trove of raw footage of what the band did best — on stage, on TV, in the studio, and even holed up afterwards in their hotel rooms.

Adding to the sense of revivification are clips from the lads’ early press conferences in which they were clearly having fun with their newly acquired role as pop stars.

There’s a significant political shift in The Beatles’ relationship with the media when the band takes a stand in Jacksonville, Florida, refusing to play before racially -segregated audiences.

But it’s the controversy sparked by John Lennon’s flippant “more popular than Jesus” comment that exposes them to the full force of a public backlash.

“By the end it became quite complicated, but at the beginning, things were really quite simple,’’ observes Paul McCartney, who Howard interviews along with Ringo Starr.

John Lennon and George Harrison contribute via archival clips.

Elvis Costello, screenwriter Richard Curtis (Love Actually) and Whoopi Goldberg are amongst a somewhat eclectic bunch of celebrities who recount their personal experience of the band.

Eight Days a Week is an upbeat re-examination of The Beatles’ impressive early oeuvre. It successfully captures a poignant turning point in their relationship with fame but stops well short of the period in which the band unravelled.

Yoko Ono’s stony face, as she observes The Beatles’ final public performance on the roof of Abbey Road Studios, piques interest in what would likely be a sharper-edged “sequel.”

Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years opens in cinemas on September 16 for one week only.

Originally published as The Beatles get back to where they once belonged in Ron Howard’s hard-working documentary