FILTER SCREEN
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
New TV documentary is rich in archive footage but offers no satisfying resolution. By Jim Wirth.
The Beach Boys ★★★
Dir: Frank Marshall, Thom Zimny
DISNEY+. S
HIS FACE crumpling at the end of this latest airbrushing of the Beach Boys saga, Mike Love explains the state of relations between him and the band’s troubled artistic director Brian Wilson. “There have been ups and downs in our relationship and these days we don’t really talk much,” says the on-off panto villain of band legend. “But if I could, I’d probably just tell him that I love him. And nothing anybody can do can erase that.”
If Peter Jackson’s rapturous Get Back documentary siphoned off some of the bad blood that poisoned The Beatles’ story, Frank Marshall and Thom Zimny’s film struggles to find a similarly redemptive conclusion to the melodrama of California’s adult-pop pioneers. Now living under a conservatorship, a frail-looking Brian Wilson appears early on. “When I was young I learned to sing harmony with my family,” he says. “That was a long time ago.”
Quite how long ago The Beach Boys became such a grim enterprise is a question that hangs in the air throughout this film, which benefits from plenty of excellent private photos and home cinema clips. To start with, Brian Wilson’s obsession with harmony group The Four Freshmen dovetailed with youngest brother Carl’s yen for rock’n’roll, with sexy middle brother Dennis, cousin Mike Love and pitch-perfect Al Jardine joining to forge the next-gen surf act in 1961.
They sounded great together, but fun fun fun was rare once business, and the Wilsons’ monstrous, jealous father Murry got involved. A recording of a drunk Murry berating his sons during a late- ’60s recording session could be something from an Arthur Miller play. “Brian, I’m a genius too,” he barks at one point.
“I’ve protected you for 22 years but I can’t go on if you’re not g
