The third installment in a series of on the collaboration of Lennon and McCartney, ‘Composing Outside the Beatles: Lennon and McCartney 1973-1980’ brings a lot to the table…if you can bear to sit through it!
I had mentioned to another Beatles freak that I had been sent a copy of this video to review and since I had never seen the first two installments, they informed me that they felt the first two were ‘dry’. I don’t know that I’d use that same term, but instead I felt this documentary, about the separate careers of Lennon and McCartney after the split of the Beatles, drawled on…and on. Even my son, who was sitting within ear shot while I watched, commented, “Everyone just went on and on and never seemed to shut up.”
But as I said, this movie is not without it’s good points. I think it does do a fine job of covering all of Lennon’s and McCartney’s albums in great detail with commentary by such well respected people as: Denny Laine, Klaus Voorman, Denny Seiwell and Anythony DeCurtis, to name a few. The problem seems to arise when the producers decided to let everyone have their say about the albums, making the whole thing a bit lengthy and boring. I also think this isn’t necessarily a DVD for the hardcore Beatles freaks, since I don’t know that it gave much information that hasn’t already been published elsewhere.
All-in-all, a well made documentary, but be prepared to pause your player to enjoy life!
This DVD will be released on October 25, 2011 and can be pre-ordered on Amazon.com.
**Note: I just looked at the Amazon page for this DVD. It says the run time for this movie is 60 minutes. Not true…it’s 139 minutes!
I rate this movie: 2 out of 4 Beetles
Beatles-Freak's Reviews 
Expand if you enjoy a completely sycophantic deluded lesson on the greatness of john lennon as a solo artist then this is the dvd for you.
any mention of mccartney’s work is not only severly biased but far too slightly covered.
the truth is lennon missed mccartney as much as the other way around,indeed possibly much more.
john lennons early 1970s work is totally overated here whilst paul mccartney’s is totally underated.
this is not a balanced view and a a pretty miserable beatles docu.
i do believe the next in the series covering their work from 1973-1980 is actually being released this week [nov2011].
it will be interesting to see the ‘lennon spin’ his hero worshipers put on his miserable output during this period whilst mccartney went on to become the biggest selling artist in the world all over again.!