The new film "Love & Mercy" offers movie and music fans plenty of "good vibrations." The film chronicles the rhythmic rise of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys in the 60s, as well as his darker times in the 80s. In the early years, he's played by actor Paul Dano. The film also jumps ahead two years to see an older Wilson, played by actor John Cusack. "I feel like it was a great way to approach Brian and his story, and not just trying to do birth to present day," Dano said. The two actors, along with Elizabeth Banks, who plays Wilson's second wife Melinda, were all fans of the Beach Boys' music, but it's when they all dug a little deeper that they discovered so much more. "In terms of his true personal journey, his story, his challenges, I didn't know anything and he is such an amazing survivor and so deserving of a story being told," Banks said. "More than one, probably," laughed Cusack. Dano agreed. "To see somebody have that much joy in music, but so much struggle in their life, you couldn't write it. It's hard to believe actually." The three actors got to meet Wilson and were roundly impressed and honored just to be around him. "He's a mystical Cheshire cat of an enigma of a man, but so sweet and friendly. I've never heard him say a bad word about anybody," Cusack observed. "Brian is a very honest person. He kinda says what he's thinking and feeling," Dano said. "I remember seeing the film sitting close to him, and then afterwards he went 'That's a really good movie!' and I went, 'Ahh! Thank God.'" "Love and Mercy" also stars Paul Giamatti and will be in theaters in limited release on Friday, June 5, 2015. Author: George Pennacchio, Los Angeles Los Angeles Times Review: Wouldn't it be nice if "Love & Mercy," the uneven biopic about Beach Boys cofounder Brian Wilson, was as persuasive as the performances of the two actors who play him at different periods of his life? God only knows that the singer-songwriter's personal saga is complicated and eccentric enough to merit a big-screen treatment, but whether going back and forth between Paul Dano and John Cusack playing the man 20 years apart is a good idea is another question entirely. Both actors, especially Dano, do strong work, yet though each of them bears a resemblance to the Beach Boys' presiding genius, they don't look particularly like each other, which is only one reason why this self-conscious film feels convincingly told only part of the time. Director Bill Pohlad pushed for the two-Wilsons-no-waiting approach, bringing in writer Oren Moverman (who helped Todd Haynes sliver Bob Dylan into six pieces in "I'm Not There") to rewrite Michael Alan Lerner's script. Pohlad is a veteran producer but not as experienced as a director, and the two Brian Wilsons problem is symptomatic of the difficulty he has had reconciling not just two diverse story lines but also the different approaches to filmmaking implicit in each. The best, most involving sections of "Love & Mercy" take place in the 1960s and star Dano as a brilliant creator of pop music ("Good Vibrations," the "Pet Sounds" album) unlike any that had been heard before. (Wilson apparently agrees: He's quoted in the press notes as saying, "My favorite scenes in the movie are the ones in the studio where I'm producing the record.") But even these sections are muddied by Pohlad's weakness for strained artiness, like a shot that apparently sends a camera down, down, down Wilson's auditory canal. Dano, who has managed to look and behave uncannily like the 1960s Wilson, portrays him as very much the solitary genius who is sincere and earnest about his work. His especially effective opening moment has him sitting in front of a piano and musing, "Sometimes it scares me to think about where the music comes from. What if I lose it, what if I never get it back? What would I do then?" That fear is not the only thing that scares Wilson. An episode of paralyzing fear on an airplane leads to his request of band members that they leave him home while they tour Japan. Upset that the Beatles have pushed pop music's boundaries with "Rubber Soul," he insists, "I can't let them get ahead of us. I can take us further." The work Wilson does in the studio recording the groundbreaking but uncommercial "Pet Sounds" with the ace musicians known as the Wrecking Crew (Teresa Cowles is cast as a dead ringer for bassist Carol Kaye) is one of "Love & Mercy's" most involving sequences.

• published: 04 Jun 2015
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