Long Promised Road feels both vapid and exploitative. And worse, it has almost nothing of value to tell us about the actual music Wilson created.

| Oct 1, 2022

[A] modest, elliptical, ultimately desperately moving new documentary.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 18, 2022

[An] evocative if unsurprising documentary...

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 18, 2022

What the film demonstrates above all is that whoever the "real" Brian Wilson is, we're never going to find him now.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 24, 2022

Wilson isn't especially articulate, but his emotional responses to the individual songs are often lucid and revealing.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 23, 2022

One to make the superfans smile.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 21, 2022

Long Promised Road doesn't really bring us any closer to comprehending the inner workings of Brian Wilson's extraordinary mind, but it might just remind us that there is a real suffering human being behind the musical magic.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 20, 2022

Kindly film-making that puts Wilson at ease, and allows for some rare, unusual portraiture of the Beach Boys mastermind.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 20, 2022

Long Promised Road is a poignant tribute to a music legend and his undying creativity.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 20, 2022

It’s revealing, if only of how opaque Wilson is.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 19, 2022

Though the film is padded out with archival footage and hagiographic talking-head interviews, to hear the vulnerable Wilson reflect on the highs and lows of his life and music in a way that feels intimate without being exploitative makes it worthwhile.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 19, 2022

If there is one unifying takeaway from Long Promised Road it's that Brian Wilson is such a kindhearted soul.

| Dec 19, 2021

There's little revelatory in this celebratory documentary about the Beach Boys' founder, but the opportunity to spend hang-time with the troubled pop music genius proves warmly rewarding.

| Original Score: B-plus | Dec 8, 2021

An appreciation of Wilson as musician, survivor and human being.

| Dec 6, 2021

You wish the scenes of Wilson creating were longer, but even the bits are inspiring.

| Dec 4, 2021

Brian Wilson's music speaks louder than words and if this movie teaches us anything, it's that everything we really need to know about the musician is already out there, on the grooves of his records.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 2, 2021

Surprisingly emotional and impressive documentary about Brian Wilson.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 26, 2021

Building a documentary around recent conversations with Wilson as he drives around L.A. wasn't likely to yield much, and doesn't, in Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road.

| Nov 22, 2021

Like many of the songs in Wilson's diverse catalogue, this documentary about his life and career finds its rhythm on multiple levels.

| Nov 19, 2021

Brian Wilson ... rides in a car with one of his friends... It's a simple but fairly ingenious idea.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 17, 2021