Empire by Helen O'Hara

A glowing tribute to The Beatles and their music, this is both a toe-tapping pleasure to watch and a smart, occasionally scathing look at how we get things wrong.

IGN by Matthew Dougherty

Yesterday doesn’t take too many chances, but it does boast a well-told story with a cast that’s game for both its comedic and more dramatic moments.

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

Although this film can be a bit hokey and uncertain on narrative development, the puppyish zest and fun summoned up by Curtis and Boyle carry it along.

The Telegraph by Robbie Collin

The film has lots of fun with its premise – until America beckons, then suddenly it seems to lose its head of steam. ... Yet it rallies in style for a beautifully judged and surprisingly moving finale.

Film Threat by Alan Ng

What Richard Curtis brilliantly does with this well-worn storyline is bring in elements to make it feel fresh.

Arizona Republic by Ed Masley

Patel does a masterful job of portraying the inner turmoil that comes with a musician having found the fame he thought he always wanted while knowing he's living a lie. And he's great in the musical numbers, which do their best to sound like someone capturing the spirit of those Beatles songs from memory.

San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle

One thing Yesterday does is rather miraculous. It forces us to hear these Beatles songs as if for the first time.

USA Today by Brian Truitt

Introduces an endearing, guitar-strumming new star in British actor Himesh Patel.

New York Post by Johnny Oleksinski

If you’re a Fab Four fan like I am, that setup itself sends you into an existential tizzy. But it makes for a likable, quirky movie that’s British writer Richard Curtis’ (“Bridget Jones’ Diary”) best work in years.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Brad Wheeler

So, is Yesterday a one-trick Dig a Pony or did renowned British screenwriter Richard Curtis and the great British filmmaker Danny Boyle turn a cute hook into something meaningful? The answer is that the duo tries for the latter, but doesn’t quite nail it.

Screen Daily by Fionnuala Halligan

Yesterday is a film we’re all familiar with, for better or worse.

IndieWire by David Ehrlich

This sweet but vacuous exercise in suspending disbelief is an overstuffed and underwritten misfire.

Uproxx by Mike Ryan

It has a killer premise, yet the movie seems to actively resent its own fantastic idea and just, instead, decided to become a fairly average romantic comedy — only with a lot more Beatles songs than the average rom com.

TheWrap by Dan Callahan

Curtis’s twee, nudging, corny comedic voice is very much the main sensibility here, far more so than anything offered by director Danny Boyle or anyone else involved.

Variety by Owen Gleiberman

In Yesterday, [Boyle and Curtis] reduce the Beatles to the ultimate product by declaring, at every turn, “These songs are transcendent!” And it’s the fact that they keep telling us, rather than showing us (i.e., with musical sequences that earned their transcendence), that makes Yesterday, for all the timeless songs in it, a cut-and-dried, rotely whimsical, prefab experience.

The Hollywood Reporter by John DeFore

Neither a no-nonsense delight like "She Loves You" nor the White Album-style head trip its premise might suggest, it's more of a "Yellow Submarine" sort of film: crowd-pleasing and sometimes enjoyable, but pretty damned dumb when you stop to think about it.