My BRUTALLY HONEST REVIEW of ONE TO ONE: JOHN AND YOKO!

One To One: John and Yoko is a rather stilted title for a great documentary about John Lennon‘s one and only full-length concert, after The Beatles split up.

This documentary doesn’t follow his and Yoko Ono‘s whole time in New York, though, just the 18 months from when they moved there, swapping their huge house in Ascot, for a two-room apartment in New York, with Lennon commenting how he’s enjoying it’s like being back to living as a student, again.

The concert in question was in the planning for some time, but those who benefitted including the Willowbrook Home for disabled children, a place that housed 5,300 kids, all of whom were just left to sit in squalor all day long, with zero stimulus, and almost zero interaction with other people, since they didn’t have enough staff to manage them.

John and Yoko also had a plan for a Free The People concert, where they’d give $10,000 to the authorities in each town they performed, which would allow for 500 prisoners to get out on bail, rather than languishing during that time because they couldn’t afford it. Ultimately, that tour fell by the wayside, which was a shame as it was possible that Bob Dylan might have appeared.

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One To One: John and Yoko also takes in the Attica Correctional Facility riot of 1971, leading to Lennon’s song Attica State, as well as John Sinclair – the titular chap having been sentenced to 10 years in jail for possessing a mere two joints of weed, as well as the couple’s relationship with comedian/activist Jerry Rubin, who at one point, talks about wanting Richard Nixon for President… but is only joking, since he hates him because of the Vietnam war.

We also get to see Yoko’s bizarre ‘Unfinished exhibition’, where it looked like it had barely been started, rather than much actually being installed, and coming across like Reginald Perrin’s Grot shop.

However, there is a problem in that we get a lot of people being shown onscreen throughout the film, from those central to the lives of John and Yoko, to randoms like ABC reporter John Johnson, but we need names coming up onscreen for everyone! Otherwise, how do we know who they are?! (well, unless someone actually names them)

One To One: John and Yoko features a staggering amount of archive and interview footage in here, even down to phone calls made and received by the pair. Perhaps they were prescient, as Lennon later comments that he thinks his phone’s being tapped, because he keeps hearing funny noises coming out of it. Beyond that, who would think to record their own phone calls?

Overall, it’s captivating right from the off, and rarely lets up, but the lack of knowing who’s who, along with the proceedings drifting a bit in the third act does let it down a tad.

NOTE: There are no mid- or post-credit scenes.

One To One: John and Yoko is in cinemas now, but isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD. However, once announced, it will appear on the New DVD Blu-ray 3D and 4K releases UK list.

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One To One: John and Yoko – Official Trailer – Magnolia Pictures

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Detailed specs:

Cert:
Running time: 100 minutes
Release date: April 11th 2025
Studio: Magnolia Pictures
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1; 1.33:1 (some scenes)
Rating: 8/10

Director: Kevin Macdonald
Producers: Kevin Macdonald, Alice Webb, Peter Worsley

Cast: (as themselves)
John Lennon
Yoko Ono
Shirley Chisholm
Allen Ginsberg
May Pang
Jerry Rubin
George Wallace
Andy Warhol
Stevie Wonder

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