The Linda McCartney Story (2000)

For the second time in his brief film career, Gary Bakewell portrays Paul McCartney in a film about someone with dubious musical abilities. In Backbeat, the focus was on founding member of the Beatles Stuart Sutcliffe, whose playing of the bass guitar was apparently so bad that he often performed with his back to the audience. The Linda McCartney Story concerns itself with Paul’s first wife, in a biopic as desultory as its title character’s contribution to Wings.

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Flashing back and forth between Linda’s battle with cancer and her earlier life, The Linda McCartney Story depicts her time as a photographer for Town & Country (here imaginatively retitled City & Village), snapping and occasionally bedding rock stars of the sixties. A brief encounter with Paul McCartney is followed by assignments to cover both the launch of Apple and the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. As the two become inextricably linked, Paul confides how his mother, Mary, used to whisper to him “let it be” while Linda assures him she will never leave. Cue flash forward to her recovering from her latest bout of chemotherapy. BLECCH!

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The Linda McCartney Story's by-the-numbers script makes this biopic seems as prolonged as the interminable death scenes that crop up throughout the film. This perfunctory approach is extended to a soundtrack featuring no Wings’ songs and a few Beatles’ songs performed by a tribute band. The cast, apart from Bakewell and Tim Piper, bear at best a passing resemblance to the characters they portray, which is amplified by a scene in which reporters scream at a Rolling Stones press conference “Which one are you?”. Even Elizabeth Mitchell looks more like Paul McCartney’s second, and let’s say “less compatible”, wife Heather Mills. Her performance though is one of the film's few bright spots.

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Biopic neglects to mention Linda McCartney’s contribution to cinema, including her Academy Award nomination for co-writing the title song of Live and Let Die and her supporting role in Give My Regards to Broad Street.