Bruce Greenwood stars as Dennis Wilson and Greg Kean plays his brother Brian in this made-for-TV movie about the history of the Beach Boys. The movie focuses on Dennis and his struggle with his abusive father (Arlen Dean Snyder) and his ultimately fatal addictions. Bo Foxworth plays Carl Wilson, who doesn’t get a line until half an hour into the movie. Andrew Myler plays Al Jardine and Casey Sanders plays Mike Love, both of whom are portrayed as being bystanders while Brian and Dennis create the Beach Boys sound. (Jardine doesn’t get a single line in the movie.) An actor named Michael Reid MacKay shows up briefly as Charles Manson, wearing a fake beard and crashing at Dennis’s pad in the 60s. The movie portrays the Beach Boys transformation from being a clean-cut group of California teenagers to psychedelic pioneers by putting everyone in a wig once the late 60s arrive.
Summer Dreams claims to be The Story of the Beach Boys but next to no time is spent on the recording of Pet Sounds and Smile isn’t mentioned at all. (Don’t go looking for Van Dyke Parks.) Admittedly, this film was made before Brian Wilson made his touring comeback so I guess it would make sense that the story would focus on Dennis, who had died seven years previously. (Brian is portrayed as being neurotic and sensitive but not mentally ill.) Bruce Greenwood doesn’t do a bad job as Dennis and there definitely is a place for a movie that takes a real look at Dennis Wilson and his contributions to the group. Dennis was, in many ways, as serious an artist as Brian but, due to his early death, he’s often overlooked. But this film, mired as it is in biopic cliches and bland recreations of the 60s and 70s, doesn’t do justice to either Brian or Dennis or the group as a whole.
Watch Love & Mercy instead.
Through the Shattered Lens 