The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

I'm over 50 but I must have just missed this group's span of popularity. I do remember seeing them mentioned in "Tiger Beat" and other fan magazines back in the day when I was looking for All Things Cassidy, and wondering who they were. The last name certainly sticks with you; it's very unusual.Interesting documentary, and also very disturbing in places. I agree with the other reviewers who would have liked to see more identifying of the various brothers each time their interview clips were shown, since I wasn't familiar with which one was which, and I had trouble telling them apart.Obviously I wasn't there when any of this was going on, but I'm always a little disturbed when families "pile on" to a deceased member and accuse him/her of various transgressions. Whether or not it's true (and I'm not saying it's not), it would have been better to have had this come out after they were all adults but when their father was still alive, so he could at least have had an opportunity to offer his side of the story. That goes for the abuse allegations (many of which were apparently witnessed) as well as what happened to all the money the group earned over their brief but successful career.Worth a look to anyone who remembers them (and isn't afraid of getting their childhood memories messed with) or anyone who's into retro pop.

The story of the Cowsills easily could have been summed up in 60 minutes--or much less. This is because so much of the thrust is how much the family patriarch was an abusive and hateful jerk. But after a while, it all became a bit numbing. It's a lot more like listening to family members gripe about a mutually hated family member in therapy instead of a documentary. The Cowsills, if you remember them, were a family singing group that went on to inspire the creation of the television show "The Partridge Family". However, unlike the TV show, the real family was NOT happy nor did they particularly enjoy their success. It seems that the father, Bud, was incredibly destructive, violent, abusive and evil. And, when the group was past their glory days, they realized that there was no money! They'd sold millions of records but the money was gone! All that I just told you was told in the first half hour...and there was still an hour more to go! Much of the rest of the film consists of talking about family dysfunction, early deaths and depression. And, eventually, the surviving members of the group began to talk about their awful father...and this pretty much makes up the rest of the movie.The bottom line is that the film was numbing. Yes, Bud Cowsill was a horrendous person...but after a while it all sounded repetitive and overly long. This all left little time for the post-we hate Bud Cowsill segment where the family learned to finally care about each other. All in all, fascinating and depressing at the same time.

"Family Band: The Cowsills Story" is a low budget and rather slap-dash documentary charting the rise and fall of the 1960's Rhode Island family pop group. Clearly compiled from years of haphazardly conducted interviews with various band members, relatives, and entertainment industry business associates and acquaintances, the documentary is rather uneven. It has numerous interviews where the interviewee(s) neither say anything of substance nor provide any particular insight into the topic being discussed. Plus, the documentary assumes that the only people who will watch are former Cowsill fans who would already be familiar as to who is who and thus it doesn't identify who these gray-haired people are in relation to the wholesome-looking, apple-cheeked, toothy kids they were over 40 years ago.The documentary just feels unfocused. It can't make-up its mind to be a history of a band or cautionary tale of abuse or a therapeutic story of healing among a broken family. Apparently, the filmmakers struggled financially for years to complete this film and it shows.Still as disjointed and unfocused as the documentary is, the story of The Cowsills is fascinating. It's the oft-told pop music tale of rags to riches then back to rags except it destroyed a family and not just a band. The documentary charts the rise of four young Rhode Island brothers who in the mid-1960's dreamed of being the next Beatles. They and a million other teenage boys who shared the exact same dream. However, the Cowsill brothers had some serious talent especially the eldest, Billy, and they had their unbelievably driven father, Bud, an ex-Navy lifer who truly believed in his children's talent and was determined to bust down doors to see them succeed.Along the way Bud's vision of success clashed with that of his sons', and, as typical with all things Cowsill, Bud's vision won-out. With "The Sound of Music" then currently smashing box-office records, Bud either came-up with or listened to the idea of turning his sons' rock band into an American pop version of the Von Trapps complete with a singing mother. So, mom, Barbara, was forced rather unwillingly into the band. Naturally, her sons were horrified by this decision, but then the band scored their first hit, "The Rain, the Park and Other Things," with mom singing on the harmonies and they were stuck with her. The brothers' dream of rock stardom then completely evaporated when their father decided that their cute-as-a-button baby-sister, Susan, should join the band for no other reason than she was cute-as-a-button.With the final inclusion of a fifth brother, The Cowsills managed to score four Top 40 hits including three in the Top 10. They appeared in numerous TV shows, performed hundreds of concerts, and even had an endorsement deal with the American Dairy Association. With their well-scrubbed good looks and non-controversial music, they were marketed as family-friendly and wholesome during the tumultuous late 1960's.And then it all fell apart. The documentary does discuss some of the immediate after effects of The Cowsills' amazingly quick fall from the pop scene and the loss of everything they had earned due to their father's gross mismanagement, but it doesn't provide too much detail as if it's still too painful to recall. The long term effects are given a lot more attention especially relating to the premature demise of two of the founding brothers, Billy and Barry.The Cowsill story is both so fascinating and tragic that even a substandard documentary can make it interesting. Their father, Bud, rivals and maybe even surpasses other infamous stage-dads, Murray Wilson and Joe Jackson, for abuse and mismanagement. On the other hand, their mother doesn't really resonate and the image one gets is of a mouse of a woman afraid to stand-up to an abusive husband and thus failing her children. Their entire wholesome image was a façade created to sell milk and records. And when Bud had burned their last bridge within the entertainment industry and with their trust funds empty, where does that leave six kids who had spent their formative years as entertainers? The younger ones were expected to just go back to school and carry on as if nothing had happened. A sort of nightmare reverse version of "Hannah Montana." It would make a good Hollywood tragedy.

Wonderful documentary by Louise Palanker that chronicles the oft posed but rarely answered question: What happened to The Cowsills? The music cleverly used throughout the film tells us a lot without trying to but what is especially refreshing is that the film allows the story to unfold naturally (and this is so important to this kind of story) in the family's own words. I never get the feeling that the filmmaker intrudes upon the story in any way. The music is a large asset to the film because it was truly refreshing and creative. Interesting insert by Shirley Jones who played the mother in the televised version aka The Partridge Family. I often wondered why TV executives did not just let The Cowsills play themselves on a televised version. This would have been a successful reality TV show had the Cowsills happened today. Brought to mind another greatly talented family group, The Jackson Five with a similar issue of paternal bullying and worse. At times shockingly revealing, the film shows what being a family is truly about, dysfunction, tragedy and all. Don't miss it.