Another by-the-numbers music biopic

Rating: 6/10 (22 May 2020)

I've been a fan of The Beach Boys music for a long time, and even though I'm not typically a huge fan of biopics, I expected my love of the music to make Love & Mercy a winner for me. Yet I felt like this wasn't a film that cared about the music as much as the man. We are shown Brian Wilson working on a few of the more complex songs, but the film seems to be more focused on exploring his mental issues and how his experimentation with drugs intensified those problems. This means it falls into a lot of the same tropes as other music biopics. I was also a bit surprised how much they limited the roles of the other band members. There are moments when they give their input and argue with Brian, but it never feels like they are major characters in the film. In fact, we hardly ever see them perform a song, we just see the recording process.
That's not to say that I was entirely untouched by Love & Mercy. Paul Dano and John Cusack do a good tag-team as Brian and you can see they worked with each other to get some of the mannerisms down. Paul Giamatti is great as the Svengali who takes control of Brian's life, although I wanted to see more of the in-between time so we could understand how Eugene Landy came into the picture. While the film didn't delve as deep into the history of Beach Boys music as I'd like, it certainly did pay respect to the elaborate lengths that they took to create some of their best songs. I'm a sucker for any of the scenes where Brian is struggling to perfectly manufacture the sound that he hears in his head. I only wish that was more of the film. This is frequently the case with biopics, even when I enjoy them, I start to wonder if perhaps a documentary would deliver more of what I want to see. Love & Mercy isn't bad, but I want the rest of the story.