I Wanna Hold Your Hand

Robert Zemeckis’ directorial debut, I Wanna Hold Your Hand follows several teenagers (including Nancy Allen’s Pam and Eddie Deezen’s Richard) as they attempt to land coveted tickets to The Beatles’ notorious 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Filmmaker Zemeckis, working from a script cowritten with Bob Gale, delivers a frenetic and unabashedly over-the-top comedy that benefits from the top-to-bottom charismatic work of its cast, as Allen and her various costars effectively step into the shoes of their respective characters and transform them into impressively sympathetic figures worth caring about and rooting for. The movie’s somewhat episodic structure ensures that certain stretches and subplots fare better than others, certainly, although Zemeckis and Gale’s irresistibly irreverent screenplay is, more often than not, charming and affable enough to compensate for the narrative’s periodic lulls. The engrossing climax ensures that I Wanna Hold Your Hand concludes on a decidedly uplifting, positive note, which does ultimately confirm the picture’s place as a strong first effort from a filmmaker who would go onto much bigger and better things.

*** out of ****