The second Beatles feature turned out to be a latter-day Goon Show with music. Although wholly sublimated to director Richard Lester's zany, flyaway comedy technique, the boys work with a will and great sense of fun at carrying out the gags the script had devised for them. After getting the story - a little thing about a sacrificial ring that ends up on one of Ringo's fingers - out of the way, the laughs come thick and fast. Lester's cutting and editing are models of timing, making things move along at a cracking pace, right up to the final glorious melée on the seashore with the ring passing frantically from one finger to another. And a sequence which starts with Eleanor Bron (an eastern princess on the Beatles' side) whistling a snatch of Beethoven's ninth to save Ringo from a music-loving tiger, and ends with practically the whole country singing the symphony, is a classic example of the sustained comedy gag - worthy of Laurel and Hardy at something near their best. A shame that the Beatles' career in this sort of film ended right here.


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