At once lush and sloppy, Across the Universe recalls the sort of children’s artwork that parents display, proudly and rightly, on their refrigerators — work that is colorful, distinctive, and outside the lines of convention, but ultimately not meant for wide-scale embrace.

Evan Rachel Wood, above left). As directed by Julie Taymor (Frida, and Broadway’s smash hit adaptation of The Lion King), Across the Universe is powered by a very powerful aesthetic sensibility.

Cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel (Amélie) knows a thing or two about whimsicality, and pulls out all the stops here, resulting in an often beguiling visual experience. But if the movie has some fun cameos (Salma Hayek as a quintet of writhing nurses, plus Bono as a mutton-chopped, Neal Cassady-type preacher, outdone in camp theatricality only by Eddie Izzard’s Mad Hatter-esque Mr. Kite) and conjures a few sporadic moments of depth-charged feeling (“Revolution” is recast as a roiling, clench-jawed lovers’ spat), it also never lastingly gels into anything more than the sum of its art-project parts. Talking to a friend, I described the movie as a feminine ejaculation; I mean that largely as a compliment, but it also speaks to some of the movie’s limitations. For the original capsule review, from CityBeat, click here. I’ll likely have more discrete thoughts in a bit, as the film expands.