10 Criminally Low IMDb Movie Ratings You Won’t Believe

4. Magical Mystery Tour

IMDb Rating: 6.1

OK, so technically Magical Mystery Tour is a made-for-TV special, but seeing as it's had a couple of limited theatrical releases in the decades since its initial Boxing Day 1967 airing (and more importantly has its own IMDb page), it counts.

The film is loosely about the vacationers on the titular coach trip, although that really only serves as an "in" to a collection of Beatles songs, most prominently the titular number and I Am The Walrus. That obviously means it's going to hold little appeal to those who aren't fans, but why would those two people even try and seek it out? Besides, even though the film is something built on the height of the band's popularity, it certainly doesn't rest on that; the music sequences are individually creative, seeing the band preempting the rise of the music video, and they smartly cast Ringo, the only one the quartet who could act, as the 'lead'.

If anything, not resting on their popularity was the mistake Paul, John, George and Richard made here; the special was widely despised on its first release, with a lack of narrative cohesion (something even Help had) and overly-inventive visuals (which were unnoticeable on black-and-white TVs) leading to savage reviews. But as that was thirty years before IMDb rose to prominence, why hasn't there been a deserved reappraisal?

The biggest push on the misconception that Tour is a waste of The Beatles and the public's time is how the band handled it's failure - Paul McCartney publicly apologised for the disappointment, which acts as a permanent mar on the movie's name (even if he did retract the statement years later).