The one thing that stood out the most about this movie is that it was way too long. This story could have been shown in 90 minutes and there was no reason for it to last over 2 hours. There were many spots in this movie where it just dragged on way too long and were very boring. On the other hand, the movie was very well acted and while the story was rather depressing, this movie is definitely worth seeing and might get nominated for some awards this coming February, including best actor for John Cusack, who played Brian Wilson in his later years. One thing I noticed is that for the flashbacks of Brian Wilson during his younger years, the actor looked nothing like he did in his later years, when he was played by John Cusack.

The basic story of this movie had to do with the life of Brian Wilson, who was the lead creative force behind the Beach Boys and is considered a musical genius. Wilson was also very tortured and was a drug addict and it was obvious that the reason for this was because of his extremely abusive and jealous father. After his father’s years of abuse, Brian was later tortured by his psychiatrist who oversubscribed drugs and was also very abusive and its a wonder that Brian Wilson is still alive considering all the drugs he has taken in his life. The main part of the story is about Brian’s relationship with this girlfriend, which is a story that was told rather well, but it is not well explained why his girlfriend who became his wife stayed with Wilson when he was frequently on prescription drugs and was always around his psychiatrist, bodyguards and other people who very clearly hindered their relationship.

I found myself frequently checking my watch during this movie hoping that it would finally end, but overall I did appreciate the acting and the abusive and very difficult life of a tortured but brilliant songwriter. I also appreciated the depiction of the very difficult process of writing and producing music which was shown frequently in this film.

Overall I do recommend this movie, but be prepared to sit through a 2 hour movie that should only be 90 minutes.

Screenwriting do’s and don’ts

I assume that fans of the HBO series are going to like this movie. People who never saw the series or who don’t get HBO are going to think that this movie is at best OK. The main thing I liked about this movie is that it provided some sort of an inside view of what it must be like to make a movie; with the problems, producers, money issues and shortfalls and the ego’s and bickering among executives, producers and the creative people who write, act and create the movie in the first place. This movie probably had more celebrity cameo’s than any movie ever has; maybe of all time. The many cameo’s neither took away nor did they add any value to the movie’s content. In the end, I thought the movie was just OK, not bad, but not that good either.

This movie has just a moderate recommendation from me.

Screenwriting pitfalls

Writing Subtext

In all the movie comedies I have ever seen I don’t remember ever hearing jokes like: “You look like this” or “You look like that”, exaggerating the way someone looks in some outlandish comedic way.  This comedic method was way overused in this movie. There had to be about 40 jokes like this and most of them were not funny.   Melissa McCarthy, the lead character in this movie has always been funny in all her movies, some of them in a subtle way and some of them, like the “Bridesmaids” in an overtly comedic way.

This movie was funny a good percentage of the time and enough of the time to recommend, but it could have been a much better movie if the story and the complex plot made more sense.  At the end, the explanations of what was happening barely made any sense which for me ruined the payoff of the movie at the end.

Overall this movie was good enough to recommend.

Screenwriting lessons learned