When the Blue Meanies attack Pepperland, it's John, Paul, George, and Ringo to the rescue in this colorful (likely drug inspires) romp.

The film opens in the colorful and cartoony Pepperland. The music-hating Meanies attack with their big blue flying glove turning the townspeople to stone. Fred the Pepperlanderer jumps aboard a flying yellow submarine and heads to Liverpool, a gray and dreary land with much more angular reality-based designs in which the yellow sub sticks out like a sore thumb. The sub captain finds the Beatles in their mansion with hundred of doors (which houses the likes of yellow elephants, Frankenstein's monster, King Kong, and locomotives). Aboard the SS Yellow Sub, The Fab Four sail the sea of time (where they sprout old man beards and where each second gets its own animated visual), sea of science, sea of monsters (complete with a "university" of fish, giant kinky boots, and two-eyed cyclops), sea of nothing, sea of heads, and sea of holes all with crazy imaginative and distinct visuals ranging in inspiration from MC Escher to Salvador Dali. They finally arrive in Pepperland, where the pace does slow a bit, and they impersonate Sgt. Pepper's band, and ultimately establish peace in the land (love is stronger than glove).

The film includes such hits as the titular Yellow Submarine, Eleanor Rigby, All Together Now, When I'm 64, Only a Northern Song, Nowhere Man, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, All You Need is Love, Hey Bulldog, and It's All Too Much.

While the actual movie story is pretty terrible as is the animation quality, that's not really the point. The visuals are insanely brilliant and creatively mesmerizing. This is really a quintessential piece of 1960's psychedelic art, a modern Alice in Wonderland. Add to the visuals classic Beatles tunes, and count me entertained to the tune of an A-.

When 'Yellow Submarine' came to Australia I was five or six, and my mother worked in a cinema. Consequently I got to watch films for nothing, over and over. I remember she used to give me these little bits of paper that came in the stainless steel ice-cream drums and the usher would pretend they were tickets.

Errr.. yes, sorry.

Can you imagine what 'Yellow Submarine' was like to an eccentric six year-old in 1969? It was possibly the first movie I'd ever seen that totally entranced me and transported me into a reality that seemed completely magical and completely real.

Of course, a lot of that probably had to do with being six years old.

I admit, I don't get anything like that from it now. Still, I've yet to run into anyone who hates this movie. It's just so daft and 60's I don't think anyboy could bring themselves to detest it.

Pepperland is invaded by The Blue Meanies (that flying glove utterly blew my mind when I was a kid) who steal their music, and The Beatles set out on a Yellow Submarine to save the day. It's a quest movie.

Basically the animation is really lousy, though the background drawings are often very interesting, and perhaps, it occurs to me, might even have influenced 'Fantastic Planet' which came out a few years later.

Fortunately what it lacks in technique it largely makes up for in ideas. The thing looks and feels like it was concieved by a bunch of nutcases on acid, which it probably was. The Fab Four (who at this stage, it might be remembered, were also basically a bunch of nutcases on acid) travel from one bizarre universe to another. Sometimes scenes are obviously contrived as excuses to use a particular song, but that isn't necessarily an outright bad thing.

I'd by lying if I said this were a great movie. Somehow, all the same, it's still a classic one, and it's nice to know it's there even if I'll probably never own it. I'm not sure how that all makes sense together, but it just does. It seems almosy to be great and stupid at the same time. If it were a person, it would be an idiot-savant.

Oh, and this is the one movie here of which I'll bet nobody ever says "Good film, shame about the songs."