"Blatant rubbish," declared the Daily Express, ".The bigger they are, the harder they fall."
The film premiered on BBC TV the day after Christmas in 1967. (This was done, in violation of union rules, after the actual shooting was over Paul hopped a plane to France and brought a friend to operate the camera.) Paul's song "Fool on the Hill" is played over this uncharacteristically intimate scene in the otherwise diluted-with-too-many-characters Magical Mystery Tour.
Paul filmed a likable sequence of himself jumping around and cavorting alone in the hills of Nice, France. There's also a rare scene of the Fab Four dressed to the nines, in formal white tie and tails, singing "Your Mother Should Know" and doing a Fred Astaire-style ballroom dance routine. We filled it in as we went along." So, with no script to speak of, the Fab Four rented a coach and hand-lettered it as the "Magical Mystery Tour," and off they went, with the hope that this mysterious scenario might somehow prove interesting and entertaining. According to Ringo Starr: "Paul had a great piece of paper-just a blank piece of paper with a circle on it. A few days after Epstein's funeral, the boys gathered together and had a meeting. The idea lay dormant until late August of 1967, when The Beatles' loyal and dedicated (and irreplaceable) manager Brian Epstein died of a drug overdose. While on the plane, Paul took a big piece of paper and drew a pie chart, hoping to fill in the blank sections with entertaining ideas for a mystery tour. At the time, "Mystery Tours" were all the rage in England-these being low-budget weekend getaways, groups of people riding overnight on a bus to a surprise destination. The genesis of the disaster known as Magical Mystery Tour was a flight Paul McCartney took from America to England in April 1967. The Beatles surreal film Magical Mystery Tour was, in the words of 150 Glimpses of The Beatles author Craig Brown, a trip into the past, dotted with scenes. The music this time round is less reliable than in earlier Beatles' films: George's Blue Jay Way well merits the fast-forward touch, for instance, and though it's fun to see the I Am The Walrus segment again, the most refreshing appearance is that of The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, caught backing a stripper on Death Cab For Cutie.Did you know The Beatles made a TV movie? Magical Mystery Tour (1967) was their one and only attempt, but it holds another unique place in Beatles history-it was the first, and unequivocally the biggest, flop of their storied career. It's a more expensive, less inspired take on Lindsay Anderson's The White Bus of the previous year, replacing Anderson's harder social surrealism with a common or garden whimsy laced with unappetising dollops of mystic hippy nonsense masquerading as significant comment. Throughout the film, for which Ringo served as Director of Photography, there's a sense of the British Spirit being gently spoofed, but it's to no great point. Starting with the basic idea of, yes, a coach tour, the group appears to have forgotten to include a story.
Contrary to The Beatles' intentions, Magical Mystery Tour demonstrates that untrammelled "creativity", though believed A Good Thing at the time, is able to come up with barely adulterated drivel when exercised free of the order a Lester puts on the narrative.