Having always lived in a world where The Beatles is a known quantity, it’s impossible to fully appreciate their impact on popular music or to imagine a world in which they never released their endless catalog of classic rock hits. “Yesterday,” a high-concept comedy by writer Richard Curtis and director Danny Boyle, exploits this premise, finding new ways to celebrate the timeless tunes of the fab four. In what could have been a firmly British satire about fandom and the fleeting popularity that comes with being a part of the recording industry, a universal appeal is established through the shared love of The Beatles and the wide-reaching magic of their music.

Struggling singer-songwriter Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) decides to finally give up on his dreams of making it in music after a gig at a festival goes horribly wrong. On his way home, his bike is hit by a car and when he awakes in the hospital, he finds himself in a world where The Beatles never existed. After the shock of this discovery subsides, Jack realizes that he can shamelessly pass off their music as his own. Now, with a roster of battle-tested bangers at his disposal, he rises out obscurity and is quickly injected into the mainstream music industry by fellow Brit, Ed Sheeran. Jack’s longtime friend and part-time manager Ellie Appleton (Lily James) is soon sidelined by his ascension, and the pressure of being exposed as a fraud causes the young performer to unravel on the world’s stage as Jack-Mania surrounds the release of his first album.

Screenwriter Curtis has a knack for finding humor in absurdism by having his character react to ridiculous circumstances with dry, matter-of-fact whit. This style dominates much of the first half of the film as we come to understand Patel’s plight as the lead. The second half sees Curtis slipping into the common trap of sentimentality and gauzy self-reflection that often compromises his original premises. That said, this project never loses too much momentum even as it settles into an unnecessary romantic comedy conclusion. Surprisingly, co-stars like Ed Sheeran playing a naturalized version of himself and Kate McKinnon as a greedy and intimidating Los Angeles record executive help to keep the moodier back half of the project lively and entertaining.

Though this is a collaboration between two titans of British filmmaking, Danny Boyle (“Trainspotting,” “28 Days Later,” “Slumdog Millionaire”) purposefully recedes, giving Richard Curtis (“Love Actually,” “Notting Hill,” “About Time”) the creative spotlight. The filmmaking is confident and visually Boyle presents the story with the kind of grounded weight that’s not always present in other Curtis works, but the immediacy of Boyle’s more celebrated movies is tampered down to let the breezy quality of this picture lift the audience up.

The comedy in “Yesterday” is effective and warm, even though the main character is a bit of sad-sack and the love story is largely unearned. However, as a love letter to The Beatles, this movie does a wonderful job of presenting their music in a way that is divorced from the burden of legacy, exposing the raw simplicity and the beauty of their songwriting. There’s nothing here that I would call essential in terms of a film-going experience, but it’s a likable effort that will likely have you humming your favorite Beatles jams as you exit the theater.

Grade: B

Cassidy Robinson is a former Idaho State University student with a master’s degree in film studies from Orange County’s Chapman University. He is currently working as a media journalist in Los Angeles, California.