The Beach Boys
                         
Director: Frank Marshall, Thom Zimny
Year: 2024
Rating: 7.0
Decades after their creative days in the 1960s, the Beach Boys are still popular in film. There have been a few of them that I have seen lately - Brian Wilson: I Just Wasn't Made for These Times, Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road, Love & Mercy - that tended to focus on Brian and his mental disintegration and recovery more than the whole group. He was definitely the genius behind those astonishing harmonies, but the group sang those intricate harmonies pitch perfectly and this 2-hour documentary spreads the love around starting at the beginning. I was out of the country for most of those early years and didn't catch up with their music till decades later. The early stuff is as Brian says in this - simple and joyful - and Pet Sounds is one of the greatest albums ever made. This is produced by Disney, so it keeps it positive and clean for the most part but at the same time it does cover their horrible father, Brian's slow isolation and their fall from popularity.

 

It was three brothers - Brian, Dennis, Carl - a cousin, Mike Love - and a friend, Al Jardine.  And a father who drove them mercilessly more with a stick than a carrot. They were just teenagers when they began singing harmonies - copied from records of The Four Freshmen - and eventually Brian began arranging the music and vocals and Mike wrote the lyrics. Popularity came quickly after they signed with Capitol and they had hit after hit. Their sound which came to be called the California Sound was fresh, new and combined surf music with those harmonies. Songs about surfing, cars and girls. In reality, Dennis was the only one who liked going in the water - ironically, he was to drown in 1983 - or to drive race cars. Brian became more introverted and stopped touring - at one point they hired Glenn Campbell to tour with them. Brian just wanted to stay home, compose, have the songs ready to go using the Wrecking Crew to record the music and then having the group come in to sing their parts.

 

Times were changing socially and music was evolving as well. The Beatles threw Brian for a loop. Their early albums were so basic he thought and yet they were a phenomenon. After Rubber Soul came out, he felt he had to out do it. Months in the studio and Pet Sounds came out - to general disinterest from the public. They wanted Help Me Rhonda and instead got these beautifully layered songs and God Only Knows - perhaps the greatest song ever. It crushed Brian and he receded even more. He was unable to finish Smile and dropped out though Good Vibrations was a huge hit. Brian finished Smile a few years back and released it as Brian Wilson Presents Smile. It is a good album. The other Beach Boys began producing and writing their songs and they just went nowhere. Music had changed so much - Led Zeppelin. The Who, Sgt Peppers - and they just didn't have the chops to be relevant. But when a two-disc best of set of their early songs was released and became an immense hit, they were able to fill stadiums for concerts. The film does not really get into Brian's struggles for years or Dennis's drug use and only touches on the conflicts within the group.  But who really needs that. The music is what counts.