The Best Beatles Review reviews maybe. . . .

August 1, 2026

This is my Beatles documentary review of The Beatles: Get Back on Disney+. It first came out in 2021, so yes, I’m a little late to the party. In fact, I may as well have been living on Mars not to have watched it before now.

Better late than never.

Directed by Peter Jackson, The Beatles: Get Back follows John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr as they attempt to write a brand-new album before performing what would become one of the most famous concerts in music history – the Beatles’ legendary rooftop concert.

It is a very long documentary but well worth the trudge if you like the Beatles.

Where Did All This Beatles Footage Come From?

Back in January 1969, cameras followed the Beatles almost constantly as they rehearsed and wrote songs for what eventually became the Let It Be album.

Dozens of hours of film were shot for the original Let It Be documentary before sitting in storage for decades.

Peter Jackson painstakingly restored all of that footage and turned it into one of the finest Beatles documentaries ever made.

Is The Beatles: Get Back Worth Watching?

Absolutely.

The joy comes from watching genius happen in real time.

One minute Paul McCartney is absent-mindedly messing around on the piano.

The next, you slowly realise he’s writing Let It Be.

Ringo Starr is chatting to one of the Apple executives while Paul plays away in the background. The executive remarks that he could happily sit there listening to Paul play piano all day.

Ringo agrees.

Watching songs like this appear from absolutely nowhere is fascinating.

Paul has always said melodies simply come into his head.

How somebody writes Let It Be, Hey Jude or The Long and Winding Road is beyond me.

For the record, I’ve always preferred Paul’s famous “granny songs” to much of John Lennon’s material.

That’s probably my inner Paul fan talking.

Yoko Ono Isn’t The Villain I Expected

One thing that genuinely surprised me was Yoko Ono.

If you believed everything the newspapers wrote over the years, you’d expect her to spend the entire documentary tearing the Beatles apart.

Instead, she comes across as friendly, warm and actually quite funny.

The band once drifted into what they jokingly call “Yoko jams”, where Yoko improvises while the others happily join in.

She’s certainly quirky.

But nowhere near the villain history often paints her to be.

Paul McCartney Is Not Always Nice

This probably surprised me more than anything.

Growing up during the 1980s, I honestly thought Paul McCartney was one of the nicest people on the planet.

This documentary bursts that little childhood bubble.

He reminded me of Glenn Hoddle.

Hoddle was a world-class footballer but often became frustrated as a manager because other players couldn’t quite see the game the way he did.

Paul’s the same.

He’s constantly chasing perfection.

When the others don’t immediately hear what he’s hearing in his head, you can see the frustration creeping in.

Don’t get me wrong.

He’s still a genius.

But geniuses aren’t always easy to work with.

Mind you, there was also a “John level.”

Every Beatle had his own type of brilliance.

I’m simply more of a Paul fan than a John fan.

Was The Beatles Break-Up atmosphere really That Bad?

One thing Get Back completely changed for me was the story surrounding the Beatles breaking up.

For years I’d heard they could barely stand one another.

Yes, there were arguments.

Yes, George Harrison temporarily walks out.

But there’s also endless laughing, joking around and genuine affection between them.

It doesn’t feel like four men who hated each other.

It feels like four mates who have spent almost every waking hour together for the best part of a decade and are beginning to grow in different directions from each other.

George understandably becomes frustrated that Lennon and McCartney dominate the songwriting.

Meanwhile all four Beatles now have partners, families and interests outside the band.Most importantly they did not really record songs with each other. John Lennon And McCartney would write songs separately in their own homes and take their songs to the studio. They would modify the songs when they took them to the studio but by the bring their songs to the studio unlike they did when they were younger..

That was probably inevitable.

Sadly, we’ll never know whether they would have reunited because John Lennon was murdered in 1980.

Thankfully, all four Beatles left behind an astonishing catalogue of music that still sounds fresh today.

Final Verdict

If you’re a Beatles fan, this is essential viewing.

If you’re interested in songwriting, it’s even better.

Watching some of the greatest songs ever written slowly emerge from what initially sounds like random noodling is genuinely fascinating.

More than anything, The Beatles: Get Back strips away decades of myths.

It doesn’t present four untouchable legends.

It shows four funny, talented, flawed human beings trying to make another great record.