Summer Dreams: The Story of the Beach Boys

An okay film, but not a good depiction of Mike Love. Yes he has definitely had, and still has plenty of his moments. But this film focused way too much on his negative side.

As an avid film buff - I've got to say that despite "Summer Dreams" being a tv movie, it is of excellent quality. The acting, in particular Bruce Greenwood in the role of the late Dennis Wilson, is superb and the way in which the story is told is intriguing, touching and real without being over hollywood-ized. Summer Dreams is perhaps the best tv movie I have ever seen. As matter of fact I have had it on video since it first aired. in 1990...quite a long time. If you ever catch it in the tv listings, give it a shot -- it is well worth watching.

Story about a $100 start-up known as The Beach Boys. How they help to paint a bright picture of west coast carefree life style. However, their own creativity was often tinge with sadness and tragedy. The film, considering it was made for TV, appears to be admirably well executed for a 90min flick. Both actors who play Dennis Wilson and Mike Live pull off a reasonable performance. The depiction of facial and head hair capture The zeitgeist of the time. For a 90 min flick, some of their or Brian Wilson songs make guest appearances. The film does hints at Brian Wilson's metal state and does it respectfully. The rest they say is history.

I recognized most of the key points in the movie from biographies I have read in the past, so I assume it is fairly historically-accurate. However, the biopic is very rushed. It's never all that clear what time period you are in, skips over large chunks of time, and it treats everything as equally important. Brian Wilson literally goes from a clean cut Beach Boy to looking like modern-day Haley Joel Osment within minutes, and certain key events such as the development of Pet Sounds passes extremely quickly. So, what is there is accurate, and about 50% of it is fairly enjoyable to watch, but if I hadn't read a biography and didn't know some of their story going in, I wouldn't be quite sure what I had just watched. This would have been far better as a mini-series with a slower burn rate.

This film is currently running on cable (Nov. 2004) and I had not seen it previously. From articles I have recently read about the Wilson family, the depiction of their relationships is on target. However, trying to cram so many years of Beach Boys history into 90 minutes is too difficult. So of course, the writer focused on key conflicts which make for interesting TV, but left out a lot of the intervening story. The years go by way too fast, almost confusingly. I felt the best acting was done by the actors portraying Murray and Dennis Wilson...very believable and intense. However, as the movie progressed I became more and more distracted by the changing hair styles and some of the very poor facial hair creations (especially for Brian). My son and I started laughing whenever a new "bad hair day" began. Interesting trivia...the executive producer is "Steve Dahl" -- could this be the shock rock jock who burned disco records in Chicago back in '79 or so?