The premise of these realities being almost identical means that they had no cultural impact.

Imagine you have a friend who plays a nice song for you, and is dumfounded -nay- awestruck to the point of murder - that you aren't moved to tears by the performance because he believes the song was written by the angels themselves.

That movie overglorified the Beatles beyond credibility, and it was genuinely painful to watch.

I think the dumbfoundedness didn't arise from the inherent quality of the music, but his shock at the fact that five people in England didn't know who the Beatles were.

That said, I do think this movie missed out on a lot of potential, by not exploring what the actual significance of the Beatles to the world would have been: it never really asks what the world would be like had the Beatles never existed, which I think is a really interesting question, and instead develop a typical Hollywood plot.

I did find the lack of cigarettes amusing, so I'm guessing the parallel world really had nothing to do with the Beatles at all, they were just a byproduct