Joyous and very, very funny: Beastie Boys Story reviewed

The music of the Beastie Boys was entirely an expression of their personalities, a chance to delightedly splurge out on to record everything that amused them. And early on, in their teens-get-drunk debut album, Licensed To Ill, that resulted in obnoxiousness. But mostly they were kinetic and colourful, which is why the new Apple TV+ film about them works so well. The format suits the story.

Beastie Boys Story simply documents a stage show where winningly they talk the audience through their personal history. It’s much like Netflix’s Springsteen on Broadway. But since the third Beastie, Adam Yauch, died in 2012, the band no longer perform, so where Springsteen punctuated his memories with songs, the Beasties do it with film clips.

The doc isn’t really about the music, though; you don’t need to know your ‘Paul Revere’ from your ‘Johnny Ryall’ to enjoy it. It is, as all the best music tales are, a love story. The mutual affection between the two surviving Beasties, Mike Diamond and Adam Horowitz, is plainly unforced, and Horowitz is nearly in tears talking about Yauch near the end. Their regret about the way they treated their original drummer, their teenage friend Kate Schellenbach, rings equally true. And, unsurprisingly, it’s very, very funny: at one point the pair note that much of the band’s motivation was making each other laugh, and that joy is apparent throughout, from their teens to middle age. I came away from it wishing the Beastie Boys were my friends, and feeling glad they still care for each other.

Parchis: the Documentary (Netflix) tells a very different story — that of a manufactured band of Spanish pre-teens put together at the end of the 1970s, who for a few years were a phenomenon in Spain and Latin America (they even headlined Madison Square Garden, albeit to an audience entirely of emigrés).