Review of Love & Mercy (2015) by Clyde A — 05 Jun 2015

A very well done bio pic that might disappoint fans going into this thinking they are getting a Beach Boys biopic. It is more about the creative genius of the band Brian Wilson with the other "boys" pushed to the side.

It is a really great character study of a man's decent into madness caused by creative stress, parental abuse, and in his later years a mid life crisis of sorts. Paul Dano is one of our great young talents blowing me away ever since Little Miss Sunshine and There Will Be Blood and this will go down as one of his best performances along with those titles.

John Cusack has been winning me over with this and earlier this year in Maps to the Stars. I haven't been a huge fan of Cusack in the past but I thought he gave the older version of Wilson nice subtle moments and lovely chemistry with Elizabeth Banks who also is having a great year.

Banks has always been a charmer and here she gets to use that in a very nice way as Cusack's future wife. Even with those impressive performances, I have to say the stand out performance came from Paul Giamatti.

With only about 4 or 5 scenes, he really gets under your skin and gives one of his best performances this decade so far. The costumes and sets are all great judging around time periods and keeping a clear distinction from both periods through the art and camera work.

I loved the documentary feel to the recording sessions in the flashbacks but I wish that they didn't film all of the flashbacks like that. That kind of cause a separation in my mind that we were really watching two different movies and it got too in the way sometimes for Dano's performance to breath.

Speaking of flashbacks, they were done well to a point. Lots of modern biopics love this new trend of out of place storytelling and flashbacks thrown in at random moments but this one balances them well but it still would have been nice to watch Wilson's character progress into his madness.

I really hope this movie's sound design is remembered come award season because it is really interesting and creatively done to represent the mind and madness in Wilson's head plus they really capture the Beach Boys feel with Dano doing his own singing.

I don't know if this was just an issue in my theater or if my eyes were deceiving me but the movie looked really dark even in scenes where the whole room was white. Watching trailers and clips on my TV and on my computer make me feel like that was just an issue in my theater but time will tell if that was an actual issue of the movie when it comes out on DVD.

I would have liked to see more of the actual Beach Boys collaborations focused upon but it did make some sense for the story this movie wanted to tell and focus on Wilson's life rather than the band's journey.

Overall, it is a great acting piece and character study with a few Beach Boys songs thrown in here and there but works. I just hope we will get a Beach Boys band biopic one day to go along with this one.

Also, please remind your mom/dad/grandparent/family member that this is not a sing along. Please keep that to the car ride home. Some people in my theater did not get that memo.