FILM: ‘The Beach Boys: An American Family’ (2000)
Tomorrow, the highly anticipated new Brian Wilson biopic, Love & Mercy, opens in theaters nationwide — but it’s only the latest in Hollywood’s attempts to capture the lives of the Beach Boys. In 1990, the TV movie Summer Dreams told the band’s story with a focus on drummer Dennis Wilson, cheap wigs, and ridiculous lines like, “You’re out of the band, Buckwheat!” And in 2000, a new generation had a chance to learn about the Beach Boys’ rise and fall, with just as many cheap wigs and even more ridiculous lines, thanks to the TV miniseries The Beach Boys: An American Family.
Frankly, the words “Executive Producer: John Stamos” should tell any self-respecting Beach Boys fan everything they need to know about An American Family. It’s the Beach Boys story told from the perspective of someone who wanted to be Dennis Wilson but settled for following Mike Love around instead — and soaked up every story Mike Love ever shared about his crazy cousin Brian.
American Family opens with young Carl Wilson heading home from a guitar lesson, as his neighbor David Marks skateboards alongside him, begging him to come over and jam instead of doing homework. “Chuck Berry is so much more interesting than algebra,” David whines, but Carl’s the responsible kid on the corner of Kornblum Avenue and West 119th Street, so he says his goodbyes. Inside the Wilson house, Murry and Audree Wilson are dancing while Brian plays Murry’s song “Two-Step, Side-Step” on the piano. Brian’s been working on some vocal arrangements, and he wants his brothers to sing with him. Carl’s game, but Dennis is nowhere to be found… cut to Dennis, upstairs in his bedroom, kissing the pages of a girlie magazine, and sneaking out of the house to convince Mike to ditch work and go surfing with him. At the beach, the boys argue over who’s the better surfer (“Why do you always think you’re so good at everything?” Dennis asks. “Because I am,” Mike replies) and impress two girls by telling them that they’re musicians. When Dennis arrives home, Murry beats him for sneaking out, as the rest of the family sits uneasily at the dinner table.
Not bad for the first few minutes of a movie. We’ve met nearly all of the important characters, and they’ve been established in broad but distinct strokes: music-obsessed Brian, conscientious Carl, rebellious Dennis, cocky Mike, perpetual sidekick David, sympathetic Audree, and Murry Wilson, Evil Incarnate. And it’s obvious from the beginning how well some of these parts have been cast. Alley Mills as Audree basically reprises her role as the mom from The Wonder Years, Kevin Dunn seethes with anger and resentment as Murry, and Matt Letscher’s resemblance to Mike Love is positively uncanny.
American Family falls apart quickly after that, for two main reasons. The first is the portrayal of Brian Wilson, both in the script and in Frederick Weller’s perpetually awkward, blubbery goofball performance. Early on, when his girlfriend tries to break up with him, Brian responds by pretending to throw up a milkshake out of his car window; he composes “Surfer Girl” on his way home while humming along tunelessly to “When You Wish Upon A Star.” Brian’s touring-related panic attacks lead to endless scenes of him whining at his bandmates. Things get even worse when drugs enter the picture, and Brian befriends “drainers” like Van Dyke Parks (whose character was renamed “Samuel Pierce” in later airings of the series). In this version of musical history, SMiLE is a laughable, drug-fueled waste of time and money, and Brian’s selfish need to experiment and express himself nearly destroys the band, personally and professionally, for good.
The second reason American Family falls apart is that, quite simply, it tries to do too much in too little time. The Beach Boys story is too complicated to distill into a short miniseries, especially if you’re attempting to follow the stories of all the individual members and the Wilson family as a whole. American Family tries to include everything, and ends up doing very little of it justice. Characters and plotlines pop up and disappear at random: Mike goes through two fictionalized wives, David Marks and Van Dyke Parks throw exit tantrums almost as quickly as they’re introduced, Al Jardine and Bruce Johnston compete to see who can have the fewest lines. The Manson Family takes over Dennis’s house, with Charles Manson himself telling Dennis, “YOU CAN’T… LEAVE… THE FAMILY,” and in the next related scene, we’ve skipped to a future where the Tate-LaBianca murders have already happened, and Manson’s safely behind bars.
The relationship between Murry Wilson and his sons (and their bandmates) is the focus of much of the miniseries, but even that fizzles at the end without any real resolution. Dennis plays “Forever” for Murry, and Murry gives him his old car. Murry dies, and Dennis sets the car on fire. Audree tells Carl that it’s up to him to keep the family together, but we never really see what this means, or how it plays out. Meanwhile, Brian hides in bed, occasionally getting up to wander the house in search of peanut butter (and calling out to his wife in despair when he notices that she’s padlocked the refrigerator) or to play “Shortenin’ Bread” over and over again at the session musicians who once called him a genius (“It’s a great song, Brian,” they tell him patiently).
The Beach Boys: An American Family ends with the release of the Endless Summer compilation album and a list of “where are they now?”s over a performance of “Fun, Fun, Fun.” In a way, it’s the only possible ending for a Beach Boys miniseries made by someone affiliated with Mike Love’s touring Beach Boys band: the Boys find their happy ending when they ditch experimentation and go back to celebrating surf, cars, and fun, riding an endless wave of early 1960s nostalgia.
Clearly, the definitive Beach Boys biopic has yet to be made. Is Love & Mercy a new step in the right direction? Tune in tomorrow for REBEAT’s review!
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ajobo