There's really only one reason to watch The Monkey's Uncle, unless you're a big fan of Annette's, Tommy Kirk's, or Monkeys. Luckily for those not interested in any of the aforementioned, you can catch the real reason to watch The Monkey's Uncle in the first few minutes of the movie. That's when Annette and The Beach Boys duet on the title song....heck you don't even have to watch the movie at all, since that clip is on Youtube.
The title tune is a catchy little number written by The Sherman Brothers, who wrote many of Annette's songs. The Beach Boys look like they're having fun performing with Annette, and Brian Wilson has said it was a real thrill. Mike Love even gets to do a little bit of dancing with Annette. I'm not sure all of "the boys" thought it was as thrilling as Brian, if you check out the studio photo below. Dennis appears to be wishing he was somewhere else, while Carl studies the floor and Mike appears to be using his time to study the bored Dennis and Carl. Only Brian and Al Jardine appear to be engaged in the process.
The rest of the film is made up of what is basically three different movies. First, we have Tommy Kirk becoming the guardian for Stanley, the monkey, so he can raise him in his home. Kirk uses sleep learning on the monkey, which leads into the second part of the movie, where Kirk uses the same methods on some "not so bright" football players to enable them to pass their exams. After that The Monkey's Uncle moves into its third act, with Kirk trying to win a $10 million dollar endowment for the college, if he can prove a man can fly on his own power.
The movie isn't bad and some of the plot for the film was obviously taken from "the beach party films", which were still pretty popular at the time. Not only does The Monkey's Uncle have the club scene at the first, but the first part of the film also has Annette talking marriage, pouting when Kirk doesn't show her enough attention, and jealousy over the monkey's baby sitter becoming too chummy with Kirk....all of these things could have been part of the plot of any of Annette's "beach party films". About half way into the film, most of this is dropped and you get your basic Disney family movie. So check out the first of the movie for The Beach Boys and Annette's song, and if you've got nothing better to do and you're in the mood for some mindless entertainment, stick around for the rest of the film
The Beach Boys and the Satan is a 1997 German documentary which definitely DOES NOT deliver on the title. The title leads you to believe it's going to be one of those Christian type exposes' of the evils of rock music. Instead the film is a recap of The Beach Boys career centering around Brian Wilson. Finally, at about 2/3 of the way into the movie the filmmakersdiscuss Dennis Wilson's brief association with Charles Manson. Then the film continues on with the history of The Beach Boys. Near the end of the documentary, the movie goes back to Manson and his followers. The Beach Boys and the Satan includes interviews with Brian Wilson, Kim Fowley, and Don Was. While the Brian Wilson interviews are fairly interesting, the Manson material is mostly a rehash of well known facts and I believe was only included so the title might peak viewers interest.
I had seen Two-Lane Blacktop (TLB) many years ago and remembered it boring me to death. Either time has changed how I look at movies (entirely possible) OR the fact that I watched TLB in four sittings has made me change my mind (also entirely possible). It turned out to be a pretty entertaining movie with only one disappointment (besides the artsy/fartsy ending). In my mind, I remembered TLB as a car movie in the spirit of Vanishing Point or Gone In 60 Seconds (the original one NOT the one with Nic Cage, even though I'm a fan of Cage's). TLB is more in the vein of a character driven movie with cars, rather than an action driven car movie with characters. And that includes the fact that the cars in TLB can also be considered two of the main characters.
TLB's basic plot is about two guys - James Taylor as The Driver and Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys as The Mechanic (the characters don't have "real" names) - driving cross country and drag racing locals at each stop to earn their income. Along the way they pick up a girl hitchhiker (The Girl) and run into Warren Oates (GTO) who drives....you guessed it a GTO.
James Taylor and Dennis Wilson both prove very adequate in their respective roles with both, in my opinion, showing screen charisma. Either one could have gone on to do more movies and not embarrassed themselves as some musician/actors have wound up doing. The only unfortunate part of their being in TLB is the movie includes the powerhouse Warren Oates. He outshines not only Taylor and Wilson, but everyone else in the movie; not only because his role is more fully written, but also because he was such a damn fine actor. On top of that, he has my favorite line in the movie "I'll have a hamburger and an Alka-Seltzer".
One final thing, I noticed while watching TLB was attitudes toward people with long hair must have changed in the two years between the release of Easy Rider and TLB. Only once in the movie are James Taylor and Dennis Wilson asked if they're hippies. Everywhere else in the movie, long hairs mix with short haired and greasy haired characters with no one seeming to mind. The little that bit I have been around "car" guys, I would have to agree they're usually more interested in the car than the person behind the wheel.
Here are some facts you might like to know up front: I'm not that big of a Beach Boys fan. I think they were a great "singles" band at the first part of their career and I still like those earlier hits. I never bought into the whole "Brian is a genius" statement. All of Brian Wilson's later work just left me scratching my head and wondering what the big deal was.
Now you have an idea of where I'm coming from when I watched two different movies about The Beach Boys. First a biopic: Summer Dreams: The Story of The Beach Boys (SD) based on the Steve Gaines book "Heroes and Villains: the True Story of The Beach Boys" and second the documentary: Endless Harmony: The Beach Boys Story.
I liked the fact that SD lets the viewer know right up front that the movie added dialogue and created scenes, plus that the music in the film was not sung by The Beach Boys. At least that's giving you some sense of what's in store for you in this film. The first part of Summer Dreams is stronger than the second part and I think a lot of that has to do with facts. Since the first part is concerned with formation of the band and how they achieved success, it's much easier to base this part of SD on noted and known events. Although I'm sure, like any biopic, the facts have been condensed or re-arranged to fit into the short time span of a TV movie. In the second part of SD, we get more into the personal side of the Beach Boys and SD struggles some with showing the downside of success - especially Brian's drug use and mental illness and Dennis' drug use and philandering. Even though, SD may not be completely accurate, it still didn't shy away from some of the truths, even including a brief segment about Dennis getting tangled up with Charles Manson.
The movie starts with the accidental drowning of "down on his luck" Dennis Wilson and flashes back to show us how he got to that point in his life. SD mainly focuses on the relationship between brothers Brian (Greg Kean) and Dennis (Bruce Greenwood) with Carl (Bo Foxworth) playing only a secondary role in the movie, as do Mike Love (Casey Sander) and Al Jardine (Andrew Myler). Murry Wilson (Arlen Dean Snyder), their father, is shown to be a tough S.O.B. and from what I have read this is somewhat of an accurate portrayal of him. Man! it's no wonder the Brothers Wilson had such problems, because it appears Murry's terrible child rearing skills may have been a cause of Brian eventually becoming mentally ill (although drugs probably added some to this), Dennis being a wild child rebelling against his upbringing and although we don't get a full grasp on Carl, it appears he became withdrawn and that food was his friend.
Endless Harmony: The Beach Boys Story (EH) mainly focuses on the music and only briefly mentions any personal or band problems. It was interesting to see events in EH that correlated with the fictional events shown in SD. The main problem with EH is that is became quite repetitious hearing how great all the Beach Boys music was over and over. I would rather have seen a documentary that was more accurate and combined some true details that were incorporated in the fictional SD instead of just the mostly white washed version that is EH. Of course EH was authorized, so I imagine that The Beach Boys had a good bit of control over the final product. Two things that I definitely did come away with from watching both SD and EH, Mike Love was a much more integral and important part of The Beach Boys than I had imagined, and Mike Love must have the worst sense of fashion, since he appears in one sartorial disaster after another.
