Hopefully this is as good as the recent Bee Gees documentary.

Wonder how much an asshole Mike Love will be in this?

This is out tomororw.

Why? They are a gimmick band no better than The Monkees!

They turned into that eventually, like 25 years on. Although I’m not completely sure you are being serious, because dismissing the Beach Boys as a gimmick band has to be closer to trolling than it could ever possibly be to a genuine opinion.

Also, the Monkees made some pretty good music.

Totally joking. It references another member's actual opinion posted recently in another thread.

I am a Beach Boys fan. They may be a touring gimmick now, but Wilson's contributions to the pop music canon are huge in my opinion.

(I agree about The Monkees too.)

Watched this tonight. I would describe myself as something more than a casual Beach Boys fan, but not any kind of superfan. I am pretty well versed in their early music (up through Smile) and know a lot of the major details of their story, but I'm still exploring the later parts of their catalog and haven't really seen most of the myriad documentaries that have come out over the years.

All that said, I thought this was ultimately disappointing. The first hour and a half does a reasonable job of telling the band's story up through the aborted Smile album and their falling out of favor with the general public. Some stuff was glossed over and it was all very Brian centric, but that's to be expected on a project like this.

The thing is, this really should have been the first half of the documentary, but unfortunately there was only 20 minutes left at that point. The movie makes mention of some of the interesting developments in the early 70's (I'm actually stunned that Blondie Chaplin and Ricky Fataar were even mentioned), but the story basically stops with the success of Endless Summer in 1974 and the band becoming an oldies act. In a lot of ways that was the end of the story for the band as a creative entity, but there was so much left to tell. I get that they probably didn't want to dwell on the dark stuff, but no mention whatsoever of Dennis and Carl's deaths (other than a dedication card before the credits), no Eugene Landy, no "Mike Love's Beach Boys", no 50th reunion tour. The movie makes it seem like Mike sued Brian for royalties sometime after Endless Summer and that was it. The band was done and Mike never spoke to Brian again until a staged reunion at the end of the movie where you don't even get to hear anything they say.

And speaking of not hearing from Brian, the filmmakers clearly did a new interview with him, but we literally only see about 3 seconds of it in the first 5 minutes of the movie and the rest is all archival clips. I get it, Brian is not in good shape these days and could be awkward and borderline incoherent at the best of times, but it definitely jumped out to me that we never went back to that interview. I can't even imagine what a trainwreck it must have been for them to not use more of it.

Overall I guess this might be interesting for someone who knows nothing about the band or is looking for a jolt of nostalgia, but otherwise there's just not much there. You know, kind of like going to a Beach Boys concert in 2024.

I haven't watched it yet and reading all the reviews so far, I am not in a hurry.

I can't say I am a massive Beach Boys fan but I actually own all of their CDs so I am pretty well versed in their music. What sucks is their late 60's to right before their Kokomo release is some of their most interesting history if you have read anything about them. Unfortunately, all their music is basically forgotten between Pet Sounds and Kokomo which is a shame because they put out some really quality stuff during that time. Granted, most all of their albums during that time are lukewarm if taken in one bit. But there are some fantastic songs scattered about them that get zero notice or airplay. They went through some crazy shit during that time in the band between all of them and it is said there wasn't any comprehensive coverage of that. A deep dive into that time for them would make for a very interesting documentary.

Also, I can't recommend Dennis Wilson's solo albums Pacific Ocean Blue or Bambu enough. Both are fantastic in my opinion and are lost gems.

It is definitely a feel-good story designed to sell new Best-Of collections (at least one real chunky one, too) that I have been seeing in my Social feeds since I watched it.

That said, it does its job as a heart-warming story that reinforces the importance and magic of the band. And at least for that I've had Beach Boys tunes going through my head for days now!

A ten-hour Peter Jackson documentary would be welcome, but The Beach Boys have never really been much about bummers and I think they want to keep it that way.

Is there a new collection? I don't think I've seen anything.

I've also been listening to a lot of Beach Boys lately. Mostly I've been digging into some of the 70's albums. I've always liked Sunflower, but after this last week or so I REALLY like Sunflower. I also bought Holland, which I had never listened to before. I really like Holland and am semi-obsessed with California Saga.

The doc does take a minute or two to acknowledge Dennis's development as a songwriter in the late 60's/early 70's. I was glad to see that as he's easily my favorite non-Brian writer in the group. It's a shame that he ultimately wasn't able to escape his demons. In some ways it's much more of a rock n roll tragedy than Brian's story.

I'll need to dig in deeper to their catalog!

This is the collection I saw - don't know if it's new though, just got hammered with it after watching the doc: https://shop.thebeachboys.com/collec...-exclusive-6lp

Oh, I see. That's a collection that has been around for 20+ years, but it looks like they expanded it from 1 cd to 3 cds a couple of years ago and now they're releasing it on vinyl. Looking at it, that's actually a pretty comprehensive set. While there are certainly tracks I could point out as "missing", that's as close to a definitive one and done collection as I've ever seen from a band.