{"id":22545,"date":"2015-07-07T10:26:15","date_gmt":"2015-07-07T14:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=22545"},"modified":"2015-07-07T10:33:12","modified_gmt":"2015-07-07T14:33:12","slug":"dennis-leary-as-dennis-wilson-in-love-mercy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/dennis-leary-as-dennis-wilson-in-love-mercy\/","title":{"rendered":"Dennis Leary as Dennis Wilson in Love & Mercy<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Dennis

Dennis Leary (far right) as Dennis Wilson.<\/p><\/div>\n

There was much to take in during a recent screening of the Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy<\/em>, which Townsman E. Pluribus Gergely<\/strong> and I took in over the weekend. My overall\u00a0critique appeared yesterday<\/a>\u00a0and is still open to discussion, but I plan on spending the rest of this week examining some of the finer points of the film. Today I’d like to discuss the troubling casting of a young Dennis Leary as Dennis Wilson as well as the broader issues I had with other casting decisions in regard to the ’60s-era Beach Boys.<\/p>\n

I’ve grown to like Dennis Leary over the years, although I found his entire act entirely contrived when he burst on the scene with his MTV faux-chain-smoking rants. (He never looked like he inhaled, did he? Bogus!) Anyhow, Leary grew on me a bit when he followed up his failed fallen cop show with that fallen fireman show, Rescue Me<\/em>. For the first time he struck me as actually passionate about something: himself playing this character. The show and Leary’s commitment too it were absurdly sincere. Although I rarely appreciated the show at anywhere but chuckling arm’s length, the peak into Leary’s humble\u00a0freak aspirations\u00a0helped me appreciate him and his act. It was an impressive run.<\/p>\n

Even more impressive is how Leary\u00a0transformed himself into a young man for his role in Love & Mercy<\/em>. The problem, however, is twofold:<\/p>\n

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  1. In the swimming pool band meeting scene, when Brian thinks the band is being bugged and should hang with him in the deep end, I kept expecting Leary to pull up a cigarette from underwater and start puffing away with one of his rants<\/li>\n
  2. Although looking fresh-faced and fighting trim, Leary is nowhere near good-looking enough to play the best-looking guy in the band.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The Dennis character comes off like a bit of a squirt. Meanwhile, the guy who plays Carl is not only a shrimp but can’t weigh more than 140 pounds. Come on, Carl was pudgy from Day 1! If the actor who plays him was so well suited for the 5 lines of dialog in the script that his weight didn’t matter, couldn’t they have at least padded out his midsection and butt a little bit? I couldn’t tell who was who in most of the ’60s scenes. Was the Al Jardine character ever mentioned by name? There was a blond guy I assumed was supposed to be him, but he actually may have been the most handsome guy in the band. The real Al Jardine looked like Satan’s kid brother. One thing rock criticism has failed to tackle, in examining the “competition” Brian felt between the Beatles and the Beach Boys is the fact that the Beach Boys couldn’t stack up in terms of Look. Brian was handsome before he retreated into the deep end. Dennis was smokin’ before he took his long walk off the plank of that yacht. The rest of the guys…not so hot.<\/p>\n

    For all the care given to Paul Dano’s Brian Wilson hairdos, the film fell short in other follicular matters. My man EPG kept muttering about the Mike Love character having too much hair. As for the ’80-era hairstyles, I already touched on John Cusack’s complete inattention\u00a0to even internalizing Brian’s hair, but what was with Paul Giammatti’s Eugene Landy rug? Did Landy actually wear a rug, or are rug makers still incapable of creating fake hair that falls down at the back of the neck? Hollywood: surely\u00a0you’ve got the dreamweavers to weave a realistic rug for Paul Giamatti. One of the finest actors of our generation should not be limited to playing only bald men!<\/p>\n