'The Beach Boys' Review: Wouldn't It Be Nice

Kick off your shoes and enjoy a pleasing hagiography, now streaming on Disney Plus.

Now Streaming: Growing up in the San Fernando Valley, I had a natural antipathy for any song by The Beach Boys. 

When I got involved with the Van Nuys High School radio station -- K-WOLF forever! -- I vigorously resisted any attempt to play a song by The Beach Boys, who had enjoyed a resurgence in popularity after the June 1974 release of Endless Summer, a compilation of their greatest hits. I thought of myself as a Valley boy, and preferred hard-edged music, which made it easy for me to fall in love with punk rock and to stay away from the four-part harmonies and cheerful pop melodies that made the group famous. 

Directed by Frank Marshall and Thom Zimny, The Beach Boys is, first and foremost, a hagiography, meant to canonize the group as one of the greatest pop music history. Even though I vigorously resisted the group's charms in my younger days, I must admit that my natural antipathy ebbed away the more I listened to their music, which made me (perhaps) an easy mark for the documentary approach. 

The Wilson family of boys -- Brian, Dennis, and Carl -- were brought up during the 1950s in a musically-inclined suburban Southern California household, with their mother supplying the love and their father, Murry, providing the discipline. (Not untypical for that era of domestic life in the U.S.) They were often in the company of their cousin, Mike Love, and their friend, Al Jardine. Music came naturally to them, as did their beautiful harmonies, leading them to form a group, which found unexpected success while most of them were still in their teens. 

The documentary splendidly assembles photos, newspaper articles, and archival video footage, buttressed by new interviews with the surviving band members, former bandmates, friends, family members and musical colleagues. It's a straightforward, chronological approach that works well to put things into context, both musically and culturally, with nods to the changing political and societal scene as the decade became progressively more turbulent and the group's popularity gradually faded. 

Until the 70s, that is, when the greatest hits album renewed their popularity, introduced them to new audiences, and allowed the group members themselves to come to terms with their legacy, a process that appears to continue for decades more, as band members came and went. 

Among the modern-day interviews, musician and producer Don Was is remarkably perceptive in identifying the why and the wherefores as to the group's distinctive, groundbreaking and influential music, but all the interviews are quality chats that are integrated seamlessly into the documentary, which covers a lot of ground in just under two hours. 

Sure, The Beach Boys is very much a hagiography. To be fair, however, neither it nor the members of the group pretend to be anything other than what they were. That's one of the advantages of growing older: it may not be true wisdom, but it is realistic and honest, and you can't ask for anything more than that. Oh, and hours and hours of beautiful tunes that are endlessly replayable, even for a Valley boy. [Disney Plus]