What’s It About
Mike Diamond and Adam Horovitz of Beastie Boys tell you an intimate, personal story of their band and their 40 years of friendship together.
MOVIESinMO REVIEW
So this is what an autobiography looks like when Hollywood is not involved. The film is presented in a theater with the surviving Beastie Boys standing in front of the screen talking to a sold-out venue about the what, where, why, and how the whole Beastie Boys thing came to be. Within the first ten minutes, it’s painfully apparent how much Michael “Mike D” Diamond and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz miss their bandmate and friend Adam “MCA” Yauch. As you watch this film, you begin to realize the group would not exist without Adam. He WAS Beastie Boys, and for those that love true stories involving artists, this film is just OK, but Beastie Boys Story is much more than an autobiography. It’s therapy for Mike and Adam. While they may talk about what it took to be famous artists, the real purpose of this film was to get all those pinned-up feelings regarding MCA out. This has to be what their Psychologists recommended. That is also what keeps this film from being something other than OK. I loved hearing about a friendship that started before high school that continues to this day. How the people they left behind played an essential part in their personal lives, and the need to do things their way ultimately saved them from a road they were heading down with detrimental consequences. They talked about who they admired, what type of music they wanted to play, and what they thought it took to make it in the music industry. They reminisced over so much stuff and gave insight into the inner workings of the music world. Beastie Boys Story has it all, but no matter how in-depth it gets, no matter what they say about Def Jam, Russell Simmons, Kurtis Blow, Don Cornelius, or Rick Rubin, everything always came back to Adam Yauch. Yes, they talk about Beastie Boys, but once you leave, all you can remember is the 2-hour eulogy you just sat through.
OUR RATING – A REMEDIAL 6.5