Various: I Am Sam

By GRAHAM REID

(Herald rating: * * )

Amusingly the directors of this Sean Penn/Michelle Pfeiffer flick about a mentally retarded dad thought they could simply use Beatles' songs on the soundtrack. Clearly they hadn't heard about the fiercely litigious folks at Apple. So they handed their Beatle wish-list (and other songs not featured in the flick) to a cast of notables including Sarah McLachlan, Sheryl Crow, Eddie Vedder, Black Crowes and Ben Folds, who took their work seriously and faithfully replicate their chosen song. So the best are among the rest: Rufus Wainwright bringing a powerful sub-operatic voice to Lennon's dreamy Across the Universe; the Stereophonics' pained and gruff Don't Let Me Down; Grandaddy's chipper alt-rock Revolution; Howie Day hauling the formerly jaunty Help! back to its desperate sentiment; Paul Westerberg's Dylanesque Nowhere Man; and Nick Cave's archetypical Let It Be.

Verdict: mostly too faithful to be interesting; one too many versions of Lucy in the Sky (Black Crowes or Aimee Mann?); and Ben Harper shouldn't have done a Donovan-meets-Phil Collins Strawberry Fields. Thumbs up to wife/husband Aimee Mann and Michael Penn, and father/son Neil and Liam Finn who offer Two of Us as bookends. Faithful yes, but they make sense.

Label: New Line