In retrospect, it’s a shame that “Help!” wasn’t presented as a one-hour TV special rather than as a 92-minute feature film. In trying to one-up the lightning-in-a-bottle success of “A Hard Day’s Night,” director Richard Lester and his mop-topped stars reaffirmed the axiom that bigger is not always better by creating a large-scale romp that only occasionally percolates with hilarity but eventually wears out its welcome long before the closing credits.
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