(EMI Music, 84 minutes)

www.thebeatles.com

All Together Now offers a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of Cirque De Soleil's LOVE show. The production is a razzle-dazzle blend of the Cirque's acrobatic stunts and the Beatles' music, which was famously "reworked" by Giles Martin, son of the group's original producer, George Martin, who created innovative mash-ups of songs drawn from the Beatles' catalogue.

The film is good at showing at how the show came together: standard rehearsal footage that builds in tension as opening night approaches, much head-shaking from the show's director Dominic Champagne as he works out the glitches, occasional comments from cast members (though too few to make an impact; they should have either had more, or cut the sequences entirely). But what's missing is any insight into what lay behind the creative decisions. Since Paul, Ringo, George's wife Olivia Harrison, John's wife Yoko Ono, and late Beatles business manager Neil Aspinall oversee each authorized Beatles release with a scrupulous eye for detail, how were they persuaded to let Cirque (and Giles Martin) largely decide how the project would come together with little input on their parts? Why did the creative team choose the particular narrative they did (a mythologized version of the Beatles' own story)? How were the ideas for the different dance numbers conceived? With a running time of under 90 minutes, there was surely time to cover a bit more territory (seeing a complete version of at least one number would also have been nice).

Interestingly, the only two members on the Beatles side who are shown disagreeing about certainly elements in the show are Harrison (who's unsure whether a demo version of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" should be used) and Ono (who dislikes the visual conception of "Come Together"), which does give some sense of the difficulties involved in mounting such a massive venture. While not a definitive look at the production, All Together Now is a nice souvenir for those who've seen the show. But its main purpose is probably to get those who haven't seen the show excited enough to want to do so.

Special features: Three informative featurettes about how the creation of the mash-ups, the sound design of the theater, and other design elements. GILLIAN G. GAAR