The Beach Boys is a sentimental documentary that downplays the feuds between the groups. Macomb Daily

The Beach Boys on Disney+ tells the story of the Californian group. From left, Dennis Wilson, Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine and Carl Wilson, circa 1964. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images/TNS)

By Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times

I will (almost) always watch a movie about the Beach Boys, the latest one, simply titled The Beach Boys, premiering Friday on Disney+, not only for the role they played in American musical and cultural history, but for the role they played in mine. From 1966 to 1969, my father worked for the group, as a tour manager; that these were their years of less popularity, when rock became heavy, austere and confined, meant that this relationship gave me no cachet among my peers. But it was interesting for me.

I saw them perform, in striped shirts, white suits, colored velvets and no costumes, at the Hollywood Bowl, while the children were still screaming during their shows; at the Melodyland Theater across the street from Disneyland, when they apparently couldn't get a reservation closer to Los Angeles; and at Whiskey A Go Go, during the release of Tournesol. I saw Dennis Wilson drag racing; his Shelby Cobra rolled over my toe as it was pushed toward the starting line, but since much of the weight had been taken off the car, no damage was done. Bruce Johnston introduced me to Eric Clapton backstage at a Blind Faith concert. (This is Eric, he said. Hello, I said.) I rode for a minute in a car with Carl Wilson and his parents.

I knew them as much as a child knows a parent's associates, which is to say not really at all, but they were familiar characters, as were the support staff in the office, in the studio and on the stage. road. They came together as scattered news and gossip, coalescing into a pantheon that floated over my life. THEMaharishi, with whom the band briefly toured, gave his mantra to my father. And there was Charles Manson, of course, the indelible dark stain in any telling of this story, who attached itself to Dennis.looking for pop stardom. My father had moved on by the time of the Tate-La Bianca murders, but since he had once thrown Charlie out of the office, it was a moment in our house.

Directed by Frank Marshall (Rather) and Thom Zimny ​​(whose documentary Elvis Presley: The Seeker is one of the best films about Elvis), it covers traveling and surfing? territory. Not even counting the dozens of online videos and star tributes, there are a multitude of full-length films about the band as a whole and about Brian Wilson, the foundation of their sound, going back decades, including three biopics: two for on television, the Summer Dreams focused on Dennis and The Beach Boys: an American family and Brian's much-loved big screen film for young and old, Love and Mercy.

Its compelling material, a story of show business and family drama, salted with child abuse, drug addiction, mental illness and recovery, a war between art and commerce and an arc of success, failure and success when Endless Summer, a best-selling two-LP-of package went to No. 1 on the charts in 1974, it catapulted the band into permanent residency as the Americas Band. With their range of fun rock n roll and ambitious, quirky art-pop, they're both a band for everyone and a band for geeks.

Running less than two hours at a time, while four-hour rock documentaries are not unusual, this is a quick, compact narrative, with surprisingly little music and swathes of History of the recorded record browsed. But it looks fantastic, with a wealth of archival photographs and home movies, many of which are new to me, even as a veteran of these things. Aside from new interview footage with survivors, in and around the band, and the usual testimonials from pop musicians, there won't be much, if anything, new for fans. What is new in the Beach Boys documentaries is the tone, which does not linger on the sensational episodes and downplays the quarrels to emphasize love.

For a band whose relationships have been notoriously divisive and whose history has been marked by tragedy, the untimely deaths of Dennis and Carl are represented only by a mostly good-natured, even sentimental, closing title. (The film is set early in their ongoing competitive career, before the Beach Boys became Mike Loves' band and Brian a solo artist, and surprisingly omits their 50th anniversary reunion tour and their final studio album, the 2012. This is why God created the radio, which isn't bad at all.) Everyone, even Wilson's problematic father Murry, gets their due. A staged but genuinely sweet final scene can bring tears to your eyes.

Like the Beatles or the Grateful Dead, the Beach Boys are an eternal group whose influence will long outlast them. And ultimately, the idiosyncratic pop music that they created in the late 1960s during my years in their orbit, that is, my Beach Boys music ended up being celebrated. Few people bought Friends when it was released in 1968, but now you can listen to onepodcast in four partsin which knowledgeable fans take it apart, tenderly, piece by piece, instrument by instrument, voice by voice.

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THE BEACH BOYS

MPA Ranking: PG-13 (for drug material, brief strong language, and smoking)

Operating time: 1:53

How to watch: Disney+

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