Yesterday: Danny Boyle and Richard Curtis make a dream duo

Yesterday is a 2019 British jukebox musical romantic comedy film directed by Danny Boyle and written by Richard Curtis. The film stars Himesh Patel as a musician who, after an accident, finds himself as the only person who remembers The Beatles, and becomes famous taking credit for writing and performing their songs.

Lily James, Ed Sheeran, and Kate McKinnon also star. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 60% based on 196 reviews, with an average rating of 6.38/10. The site’s critical consensus reads: “Yesterday may fall short of fab, but the end result is still a sweetly charming fantasy with an intriguing—albeit somewhat under-explored— premise.”

On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 55 out of 100, based on 35 critics, indicating “mixed or average reviews”.Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of “A−” on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it an overall positive score of 87% and a 63% “definite recommend”. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film four out of five stars, writing “although this film can be a bit hokey and uncertain on narrative development, the puppyish zest and fun summoned up by Curtis and Boyle carry it along.”

Robbie Collin also responded positively in his review for The Daily Telegraph, saying the film “rallies in style for a beautifully judged and surprisingly moving finale, which owes a lot to Patel and James’s chemistry.” Owen Gleiberman of Variety, meanwhile, was less enthusiastic, claiming the film had little soul and calling it a “rom-com wallpapered with the Beatles’ greatness.”