Love & Mercy (2015)

It's time to kick off the summer of reviews! And what better way to do so than with Beach Boys? And so we begin with Love & Mercy, with Paul Dano and John Cusack portraying Brian Wilson in his younger and middle years respectively. I have been a fan of Dano ever since I saw his haunting acting in Prisoners, and he has worked his way up in movies such as 12 Years a Slave. And boy does he shine through here. Not only does he look and act the part, he also sounds the part. And when doing a musical biopic, sounding the part is pretty important and impressive.Now I am a casual Beach Boys fan and really didn't look into their career before this film, but there is really a story to behold. The Dano years of the 60s experiments with LSD and all the typical band stuff from that decade, and it shows the complex mindset of the spontaneous and wonderful mind of Brian Wilson. And you get plenty of good vibrations because you get to listen to a lot of great songs.Go forward a couple of decades to the slightly eccentric Cusack who buys a car from the beautiful Elizabeth Banks who switches up from her usual comedic roles to be a more serious, "good" character without too much depth (she's not the focus, but is a driving force and provides romantic connections). Gradually, as she dates the divorced Wilson, she discovers the manipulative therapist Paul Giamatti who has kept Wilson away from all of his family for a solid 2 years at least.These scenes switch back and forth, and it is a solid dynamic to keep the interest fresh for what might be off-putting to some when they hear "biopic." You will be engaged and committed, especially if you're like me and are unfamiliar with Wilson's life, but you will also see some missed potential. At just over 2 hours, not all scenes hit the mark and tiptoe through the area marked fluff. There isn't always the intensity wanted in the Cusack scenes, so the powerful moments are toned down just a bit. But, then again, hearing Paul Giamatti yell "SLUT!" over and over can't be all bad.Generally speaking, the Dano scenes are better and what I continued to look forward to in the movie. He does the best acting, and watching his methods to find the perfect melodies while his domestic life has its struggles is engrossing and worth the watch. And again, listening to the formulation of the songs is a big treat.There isn't much to boast about directing, but the incredible performance by Dano and the more suppressed and gloomy Cusack are attention-grabbing enough if for some reason Beach Boys wasn't. Ultimately, you'll come away with new appreciation and curiosity about the band that was briefly even more popular than The Beatles, and that is always a success in the mind of a filmmaker.

The story centers on Brian Wilson (John Cusack/ Paul Dano) and his mental psychosis in two subplots; one in the 1980's and another in the 1960's after the group is famous. Brian had mental problems which seemed to be set around his relationship with his father (Bill Camp) and made worse by drug use. He can't travel and stays at home writing the definitive American album. After the Beatles left the stage and changed rock and roll by going to complex pieces involving studio musicians, Brian wanted to follow. His work while critically acclaimed, never sold as well as his beach music. In the 1980's he meets car saleswoman Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth banks) who recognizes that Gene Landy (Paul Giamatti), Brian's legal guardian, may not have Brian's best care at heart.If you are looking for a Beach Boys story, this isn't it. There are odd scenes which are used to imitate Brian's confused brain. In one scene I thought I was watching the monolith hotel room scene (2001....)Guide: implied sex and nudity. Elizabeth Banks mouths the F-bomb near the end...If my lip reading is correct.

I enjoyed the early Beach Boys parts of the story and I wished they had been longer. Paul Dano made a great job as the young Brian Wilson and those parts of the movie were very good. I also wished there had been more of their early music and the group beginnings and rise to fame, maybe exploring better the conflict relationship with their father. The later parts of the story were not of the same level. John Cusak was a poor casting for the role of the older Brian WIlson. There is nothing likable about his character and it was difficult to see what made his future wife get attracted to him, other than his bank account. It is the victors who write the history books, or in this case they are the ones that will sell the rights to the movie and control how some character, including themselves will be depicted. Maybe I am totally wrong about this, I have no way to know, but the important thing is that this is the way the movie made me feel while watching it, that it was a struggle about who would control Brian Wilson fortunes.

Brian Wilson, the leader/producer/arranger of the popular 1960s group the Beach Boys, stays behind in the US when his brothers and cousin Mike Love tour Japan in order to write songs and lay down instrumental tracks for their next album, "Pet Sounds". His busy, creative life, tinged with bitterness over his tumultuous relationship with his father (whom the band had fired as their manager), is juxtaposed with Wilson's life in the '80s as a shattered man inching his way towards a healthier, more normal existence. Vivid, though exposition-heavy shuffling of episodes in Wilson's life and career, with a fussy, somewhat overblown production design in the '60s scenes (where Wilson is played by the impeccably-cast Paul Dano) counterbalanced by a deceptively bland calm in the '80s (with John Cusack portraying the older Brian as a possible paranoid schizophrenic under the thumb of possessive therapist Dr. Eugene Landry). The screenplay by Oren Moverman and Michael Alan Lerner, "based on the life of Brian Wilson," is well-researched if overwritten; every introduction to somebody new on-screen is followed by needless dialogue covering who they are and what they do. Dano could not be better as the younger Wilson, emulating the musician's budding genius and unassuming ego with an introspective, nice-guy personality (until he's pushed, when he becomes defensive though never arrogant). By contrast, Cusack doesn't fare as well. Whether or not Cusack and director Bill Pohlad were aiming for an impersonation here doesn't matter, as the actor's brand of nervous self-doubts and sad regrets have been well-documented on film, making it difficult to accept him in this role; under different circumstances--say, in a roman à clef--Cusack's performance would be solid, but his casting here (perhaps for box office cache) doesn't quite work. The film is a near-miss, but entertaining on the whole, with terrific recreations of Wilson and LA's the Wrecking Crew making musical magic in the recording studio. **1/2 from ****