It's a film brimming with affection and over-reaching ambition. And if Julie Taymor's visionary, wrongheaded "Across the Universe" fails, it at least fails on a grand scale. 'Tis folly, to be sure - literal-minded, silly, cliche-riddled folly. But it is glorious folly with purpose.

That purpose? To sum up the '60s with a deliriously original musical built on the Beatles songbook.

"Can't be done," you say, and you're right. Summing up the '60s in a single film has been a fool's errand since "More American Graffiti," "1969" and "Hair."

But from the moment the sad, lonely and "dear" Prudence (T.V. Carpio), as a Dayton,...