THE WORLD NEEDS a new Beatles documentary like it needs another garbage gyre in the Pacific Ocean, but The Beatles: Eight Days a Weekā€”The Touring Years plays it smart by selecting a single lane of the Fab Fourā€™s sprawling saga and following it from start to finish. Director Ron Howardā€™s slick but enjoyable movie focuses on the group solely as a touring and performing entity during the Beatlemania years of the early and mid 1960s. It didnā€™t take long for John, Paul, George, and Ringo to become fed up with live performances, and the Beatles had switched to a recording-studio-only entity by the release of 1967ā€™s Sgt. Pepperā€™s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Eight Days a Week focuses on the preceding years, when the group was shuttled from city to city, usually with pandemonium ensuing just outside the limousine windows. It was an era of 20-minute sets in rickety English cinemas and cavernous American sports stadiumsā€”and much of the time the music was completely unheard beneath the deafening shrieks of the fans.

Thereā€™s nothing in Eight Days a Week that Beatles devotees donā€™t already know chapter and verse, and most of the live footage has been seen elsewhere. But itā€™s never looked or sounded as good as it does hereā€”a spruced-up version of their Live at the Hollywood Bowl album accompanies the filmā€™s releaseā€”and Eight Daysā€™ best feat is diagramming how the Beatlesā€™ insane popularity eventually destroyed them as a live unit. The crowds were too big, the PA systems too weak, and the schedules too grueling. And the unrest in the United States during the ā€™60s made the Beatles targets, particularly when they refused to segregate the audience at a 1964 Jacksonville, Florida, show and during the ā€œbigger than Jesusā€ uproar of 1966 that saw Beatles records burned by the thousands.

Still, the hagiography is not too overwhelming, and maybe this goes without saying, but these guys were a lot of fucking fun to watch in those days, both on and off the stage. Eight Days a Week is a well-drawn reminder that nothing goldā€”or platinumā€”can stay, not even the biggest band in the world.