Across The Universe is a fictional love story set in the 1960s amid the turbulent years of anti-war protest, the struggle for free speech and civil rights, mind exploration and rock and roll. At once gritty, whimsical and highly theatrical, the story moves from high schools and universities in Massachusetts, Princeton and Ohio to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the Detroit riots, Vietnam and the dockyards of Liverpool. A combination of live action and animation, the film is paired with many songs by The Beatles that defined the time.

The film opens with a solitary figure, Jude (Jim Sturgess), sitting on a quiet beach front. He is singing "Girl" with a melancholy air, while looking off into the distant horizon. It's the end of the work day as Jude lines up with his fellow shipyard hands for their day's wages. After receiving payment from the old man in charge, Jude walks back home, smiling along the way.

As he leaves, "Hold Me Tight" begins, while we flash to an idealistic prom scene, where Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood) dances along with her boyfriend Daniel (Spencer Liff) and their high-school classmates. A classic band plays along, as Lucy sings to Daniel "Tell me I'm the only one..."

In another part of the world, another couple in Liverpool is singing the same song as they dance at a dark underground Liverpool bar - a reference to "The Cavern Club," where the Beatles began its career. Jude holds his girlfriend (Lisa Hogg) as she sings "Let me go on loving you." Ambling along a dark and damp street after leaving the bar, Jude and his girlfriend hold hands and trip along the cobblestone. They stop to kiss along the road, as she tells Jude not to forget her while he is in America. He laughs and consoles her, singing "While I'm away, I'll write home everyday, and I'll send all my loving to you." While Jude continues to sing "All My Loving," he packs his bag, kisses his mom (Angela Mounsey) goodbye, and heads off to the docks to board a ship to America, seeking out his estranged father in New Jersey.

Lucy, back at Daniel's house, is seeing him off to boot camp, and the Vietnam War. Daniel, dressed in his new uniform, drives away while Lucy runs after the car down the street.

Jude ends the song as he hitches a ride along the road in America. Managing to flag down a ride, we leave Jude to look across the road. A high-school football practice is winding down, with cheerleaders running through their routines and watching the football players on the field.

After practice ends, one of the cheerleaders, Prudence (T.V. Carpio), watches wistfully as a fellow cheerleader flirts with one of the players. She softly sings "I Want To Hold Your Hand" as she watches her obvious object of affection walking away with the jock. As she watches them and sings, she walks off the field, into the unknown.

Jude arrives at Princeton University and stands on the academic quad while a student, obviously in a rush, tears his way through the campus crowd and drops all of his books and papers. While stooping down to help collect the papers, Jude asks the student if he knows a certain Professor, believing him to be his father. The student, Max (Joe Anderson), is first at a loss, until he realizes that Jude is looking for the school janitor (Robert Clohessy). He laughs, and points to a man washing windows on a ladder, saying "That's him."

Introducing himself to the window washer, Jude explains who he is, and his reason for being at the school. At first, the man is surprised, saying that he didn't know the mother was pregnant, and that he would have married Jude's mother if he had known. Jude assures him that this apology wasn't what he wanted, but just wanted "them each to know that the other existed."

Max, the charming and outgoing student from earlier, is on a roof with a few of his buddies as they chip golf balls off of a beer bottle at the nearby dormitory windows. After a few misses, he finally connects - and the group flees the angry mob that spills out of the dorm. Jude, seeing the commotion while out having a cigarette in front of the building that his father is letting him stay in, lets Max slip in to hide. Grateful, Max invites Jude to go out for the night with himself and his golfing buddies. While proclaiming that they get by "With a Little Help From My Friends," they smoke and drink their way through town until they finally collapse on couches from exhaustion.

Lucy walks home from school with her friend, while she talks about missing her boyfriend Daniel. As they walk up to Lucy's house, her mom hands her a letter while smiling; it's a letter from Daniel saying that he has been able to get a few weeks leave, and will be home soon to visit. Lucy launches into song as she flies up the stairs, excited to know that "It Won't Be Long" before she'll be back together with Daniel.

For Thanksgiving break, Max invites Jude to his parents' house for the holidays. After picking up Max's little sister, who turns out to be Lucy, they continue on in his convertible to see the family. At dinner, Max announces that he is dropping out of college, and going to New York to make a living. A family argument ensues, and the three decide to go out bowling to release some tension.

At the alley, while they joke around and tease each other, Jude thinks to himself that he's "falling, yes he is falling" for Lucy while singing "I've Just Seen A Face." When he and Max drive away to a new life in New York City, Max warns Jude that Lucy has a boyfriend. Jude smiles and assures him that It's ok, he has a girlfriend too.

Jude and Max arrive in the city, and after climbing to the top of a walk-up building, they enter a large apartment owned by a tall singer named Sadie (Dana Fuchs). She shows them the apartment, while several other people lounge around playing the guitar or reading. Pleased with the apartment, they agree to pay two weeks rent in advance, and become New York City residents.

Moving to the streets of Detroit during the race riots, a little boy cowers next to a destroyed car on fire, while black men and women run on the streets from the police. Staring out at the audience, he sings "Let It Be" among the violence. Moving into a church in the black community, while the choir swells, we see the same little boy laying in a coffin, obviously a casualty of the fight. JoJo (Martin Luther) stands holding an older woman while she weeps, staring at the little boy's lifeless body.

Experiencing the same grief, we see Lucy weeping after a letter comes to Daniel's parents, notifying him of his death. She too, stares at the burial of her boyfriend, as Marines fold up the American flag and hand it to the mother Daniel has left behind.

As the song ends, JoJo slings a guitar over his shoulder, and walks down the street, heading to New York City himself. As he steps along, "Come Together" plays to the beat. He walks down the street, and sees a sign for Guitarist Needed at the bar "Café Huh?" and enters. Sadie is there, and gives him the role of lead guitarist in her band. He comes to the apartment to live; one night while he is playing out a song on his guitar for Jude, a water-logged Prudence climbs into their bathroom window out of the rain, and becomes their newest roommate.

After graduating from high school, Lucy joins her brother Max and friend Jude in the city for the summer before she goes to college. She is happy to see her brother, but is reluctant to give him the letter that came for him - a draft notice from the government. At a party they have at the apartment that night, Jude falls again for Lucy, and breaks up with a girl that he was seeing. Lucy sings "If I Fell" while they dance, and finally kiss.

The next day, Max reports to the draft office for his physical, and despite swallowing an entire box of cotton balls in the hopes that it will show up as a shadow in x-rays, is deemed qualified for service. While he and a large group of men all endure rigorous physicals, they imagine an animated poster of Uncle Sam singing to them "I Want You."

Back at the apartment, Prudence is mourning the coupling of JoJo and Sadie, after she finds herself infatuated with the tall singer. She locks herself into the closet, and the others sing "Dear Prudence" to coax her out of her hiding place. Despite this, Prudence leaves unexpectedly; no one is sure where she goes.

The remaining gang goes to a party where an agent tries to convince Sadie to go solo. Tripping out on pink punch, the group hops on a psychedelic bus trip across the country. At a stop in a field, they see a traveling circus run by Mr. Kite, and find Prudence in the troupe dating a contortionist named Rita.

Max is now off to war, leaving Lucy angry and distraught. After seeing an anti-war speaker in the park, she decides to join their organization to protest Vietnam and bring the troops home. As Lucy devotes more and more time to the organization, Jude becomes jealous of the man that runs the group.

Sadie has finally told the rest of the band that she is planning on going solo. Infuriated, JoJo purposefully ruins her opening song "Oh! Darling" with distracting and awful guitar riffs, which forces her to leave the stage. Having his own relationship trouble, Jude sinks into his artistic work while singing "Strawberry Fields Forever." He and Lucy have now fought over her increasing involvement and obsession with her anti-war group, culminating in Jude confronting her at their headquarters while singing "Revolution."

After being kicked out, he walks by a window display of tthe announcement of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" starts playing. He meets up with JoJo and gets drunk, only to find that Lucy has moved all of her belongings out of the apartment, leaving him. Later that day, he gets on a subway (to the song "Across The Universe") to go to Columbia University, where the anti-war group's actions escalate to increasing violence, leading to police action at a rally at Columbia University.

Sadie starts singing "Helter, Skelter" at a club, while Jude, walking through, sees Lucy as one of the protesters being arrested by the police, and attempts to save her while she is being dragged away. She calls out to him, but he is overcome by the police and is arrested.

At the same time, Max gets into a firefight, where he has to shoot a lot. He gets injured and has a dream sequence about naked Vietnamese mothers floating in the river.

Meanwhile, Jude sits in his jail cell, as more and more prisoners are let free to go home. Finally, alone, his father comes to visit him. His father breaks the news that although the police will not press charges, he is being forced to leave the country and return to England. He encounters Molly, his old flame, who is now pregnant with Phil's child.

While he is walking home, the scene cuts to Lucy at Max's bedside in the V A hospital. He starts singing "Happiness is a Warm Gun" in a sequence with Salma Hayek as a nurse. At one of her rallies, Lucy is in a phone booth, while her mother pleads with her on the phone to be careful and begs her to stop her involvement in the protests. Resolved, she argues with her mother, when a fight breaks out, and a gun shot hits the phone booth. Not hurt, Lucy sinks down while singing to herself that it'll be alright. TV scenes of the DC protests and the Pentagon protest show while Max is watching from the V A hospital. Lucy goes back to the old protest headquarters and finds Paco making pipe bombs.

"A Day in the Life" is playing as Jude gets off work, and he gets a newspaper and sees that the place where the protesters were organized from had blown up. Cut to him sitting on the beach... then cut to the wharf area in NY, where Max is sitting and Lucy sings "Blackbird", while Jude wanders the beach and tidal areas in Liverpool.

Jude gets back into his routine at the shipyards, then sits in a pub after work, drinking a pint. To the words of "Hey Jude," sung by Max (as imagined by Jude as sitting next to him, while he is looking into a mirror behind the bar), he runs to his house to again pack his bags, and returns to the States (with a visa) to get back Lucy. Max meets him at Customs, and takes him to the building where Sadie and JoJo's reunited band is playing "Don't Let Me Down" to a cheering crowd on the streets.

Lucy, not knowing Jude is back, is invited with a note by Max to come to the concert. She sees the strawberry logo Jude designed for Sadie, then gets very sad because no one will answer the door buzzer, and she walks away. The police break up the concert as the crowd gathering gets larger. Jude hides from the police, and after being left alone on the roof, starts singing "All You Need Is Love" into the microphone. Sadie, JoJo, Prudence, Max, and the rest all rush back up to the roof, and join in. Lucy hears Jude's voice, and frantically rushes to get into the building, only to be stopped by the police. She turns, and runs to a building across the street, and stares at Jude from the roof across the way.She smiles as a tear runs down her cheek. Jude sighs. Together in the end, they kiss as "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" plays during the end credits