Please Please Me | With the Beatles | A Hard Day's Night | Beatles for Sale | Help! | Rubber Soul | Revolver
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band | Magical Mystery Tour | The White Album | Yellow Submarine | Abbey Road | Let It Be
Past Masters | The Beatles Anthology | The Beatles: Get Back
- Animation Age Ghetto: Oddly enough, a positive example. It was intended for teens and young adults, but only became popular when it was released on home video and allowed Baby Boomers to introduce their kids to The Beatles through a trippy cartoon.
- Awesome Music: How could a Beatles movie not have this?
- "Hey Bulldog". From the pounding piano riff, the blistering guitar solo that rivals "Taxman", its manic barking outro, and the greatest bassline Paul Mccartney ever played in his career, there's a reason this song remains a rock classic.
- Harrison's two songs have also won some admiration, with "Only a Northern Song" being a witty swipe at not getting more record time, and "It's All Too Much" as his gleefully over-the-top attempt at a Psychedelic Rock Silly Love Song.
- Even the titular song, "Yellow Submarine". Yes, it was originally a song on Revolver years back, but there's a good reason why it ended up creating its own movie when no other Beatles song did.
- "It's All Too Much" can get lost in the shuffle, but the message of recognizing the good in other people still more than holds up.
- "All Together Now" may be a simple children's song when isolated, but it being placed at the very end of the film with Fab Four themselves appearing in live-action demands the audience to participate in its sing-along nature. The lyrics being fairly quirky in nature certainly helps it appeal to any age too.
- George Martin's score is no slouch, especially considering all of the musical styles it covers.
- Roger Ebert's review makes the very reasonable point that, with no fewer than eleven songs by The Beatles, this has a good claim for the best soundtrack of any cartoon ever made.
- Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Oh, where to begin! Ringo's entire house could be called a Big Lipped Alligator MANSION.
- Broken Base: The Beatles' voices. Some find their deadpan reactions to everything to be part of the humor, others are bothered by it sounding "bored."
- Harsher in Hindsight:
- The clock in the Yellow Submarine speeds up to the year 2009, which only half of the band (Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr) would live to see.
- The film was produced during (and indicative of) the summer of 1967, aka "The Summer Of Love," as evidenced by the psychedelic Peter Max-inspired visuals and story about The Power of Love. By the time of the film's release, the movement had devolved into endless street riots, with police brutalizing hippies and their periphery, with The Vietnam War on the horizon and its two biggest opponents, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, getting assassinated within weeks of one another. When viewed in the grand scheme of history, Yellow Submarine ended up, intentional or not, kicking off nostalgia for this specific era the year after it happened.
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- When George sees that the car changes colors, he says, "It's all in the mind." Guess what made it into the Parappa The Rapper series nearly 30 years later?
- The Beatles fight a giant flying glove, eh?
- Not only that, but the guns that shoot arrows that freeze the the people of the land.
- One of the rooms contains a train (and it wasn't Paul's room, and that only leaves Ringo's!). Add to that Ringo seemingly narrating his own life during his first few scenes, and this movie can easily be read as an unintentional prequel to Thomas & Friends. That, and to top it all off, Ringo is voiced by Paul Angelis, whose younger brother Michael would replace Ringo as the narrator for UK syndication after the first two seasons.
- Ho Yay: While both characters are already pretty flamboyant in their own ways, Jeremy rubbing noses with the Chief Blue Meanie, who then sheds a single tear of joy, followed by the two of them joyfully dancing together during the "It's All Too Much" sequence clearly indicates something more than just newfound friendship.
- Narm Charm: The movie is in for a penny, in for a pound with selling The Power of Love. There's literally a song in it called "All You Need Is Love" which not only defeats but reforms the villains! In any other movie, that'd be cloying and cheesy, and yet it's all played so sincerely here that you can't help by get swept up in it, certainly helped by the fact that it (sort of) stars and features Awesome Music by a band who sincerely believed this themselves.
- Periphery Demographic:
- As mentioned above, the movie was going for a young adult audience but was much more popular among Gen X-ers and Millennials whose parents used this movie to introduce them to the Beatles' music.
- John Lennon claimed in one of his last interviews that while raising Sean, he and Yoko deliberately tried to keep John's Beatles history away from him, and played down being a millionaire pop star. It was only when Sean saw Yellow Submarine for the first time while at a sleepover at a friend's house that Sean recognized his dad in the film, and thus his role in the Beatles.
- Retroactive Recognition:
- Animator Robert Alvarez got his start as an assistant animator here.
- Paul McCartney is voiced by Geoffrey Hughes, who would later be best known for playing Onslow in Keeping Up Appearances and Twiggy in The Royle Family.
- Sweet Dreams Fuel: As mentioned above, the movie is completely in on the idea of The Power of Love, and all of its humor, fun music and joyful visuals make for just the happiest viewing experience. By the end, you will believe that "love is all you need."
- Ugly Cute:
- Jeremy.
- Many of the monsters who appear in the Sea of Monsters, including the one that briefly gets into the submarine.
- Unintentional Period Piece: Funnily enough, the movie had aspects of this right from the day it was released. The film began production in 1967, and thus the animators based the character designs for the four Beatles on their physical appearance in the music videos for "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane"—note John's horseshoe mustache and George's full beard—albeit with Paul's 'stache removed for some reason. However, by the time the group filmed their live-action cameo in January 1968, George had shaved, while John had replaced the mustache with large mutton-chops (his hair was also substantially longer). And when it premiered that summer, all four Beatles would be sans facial hair, one of the few times after late 1966 that they were all clean-shaven at the same time.
- Viewer Gender Confusion: Some viewers (particularly kids) may mistake the Chief Blue Meanie for a female character instead of an Ambiguously Gay male character.
- What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: A less extreme example. It was intended for older audiences, but there's nothing too vulgar about it that would keep kids from watching, which may be why it's become such a popular way for parents to introduce their kids to The Beatles.
