''Beastie Boys Story'' is a 2020 American live

documentary film A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

, directed, produced, and written by

Spike Jonze Adam Spiegel (born October 22, 1969), known professionally as Spike Jonze (), is an American Filmmaking, filmmaker, actor, musician, and photographer. His work includes films, commercials, music videos, skateboard videos and television. Jonze ...

, alongside Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz. It was filmed at Kings Theatre in Brooklyn, New York and adapted from ''Beastie Boys Book'', a memoir of the

Beastie Boys The Beastie Boys were an American Hip-hop, hip hop and Rap rock, rap rock group formed in New York City in 1979. They were composed of Ad-Rock, Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz (vocals, guitar), Adam Yauch, Adam "MCA" Yauch (vocals, bass), and Mike D, ...

. Jonze reunited with Diamond and Horovitz for the project after having directed several music videos for them in the past, including "

Sabotage Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, government, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, demoralization (warfare), demoralization, destabilization, divide and rule, division, social disruption, disrupti ...

" in 1994. It was scheduled to be released in a limited cinema release on April 3, 2020, followed by digital streaming on April 24, 2020, by

Apple TV+ Apple TV+ is an American subscription over-the-top streaming service owned by Apple. The service launched on November 1, 2019, and it offers a selection of original production film and television series called Apple Originals. The service w ...

. The limited cinema release was cancelled due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

Cast

* Michael Diamond as himself * Adam Horovitz as himself *

Adam Yauch Adam Nathaniel Yauch ( ; August 5, 1964 – May 4, 2012), also known by the stage name MCA, was an American rapper, bassist, filmmaker and a founding member of the Hip-hop, hip hop group Beastie Boys. Besides his musical work, he also directed m ...

as himself (archival content) *

Bill Hader William Thomas Hader Jr.''Finding Your Roots'', January 26, 2016, PBS. (born June 7, 1978) is an American actor, comedian, screenwriter, producer, and director. He was a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy series ''Saturday Night Live'' from 20 ...

as Crazy Shit Voice *

Michael K. Williams Michael Kenneth Williams (November 22, 1966 – September 6, 2021) was an American actor. He rose to fame for his acclaimed portrayals of Omar Little on the HBO drama series ''The Wire'' (2002–2008) and List of Boardwalk Empire characters, Alb ...

Bob Dylan Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan; born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Described as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture over his nearly 70-year ...

Ben Stiller Benjamin Edward Meara Stiller (born November 30, 1965) is an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker. Known for his blend of slapstick humor and sharp wit, Stiller rose to fame through comedies such as ''There's Something About Mary'' (1998), ' ...

, David Cross and

Steve Buscemi Steven Vincent Buscemi (,As stated in interviews by Buscemi himself. It is not uncommon for people to pronounce his name or instead. ; born December 13, 1957) is an American actor. He is known for his work as an acclaimed character actor. Mul ...

as Audience Members

Release

''Beastie Boys Story'' was scheduled to have its world premiere at

South by Southwest South by Southwest (SXSW) is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Texas. It began in 1987 and has conti ...

on March 16, 2020, but the festival was cancelled due to the

. The film was also scheduled to be released in a limited cinema release on April 3, 2020, in selected

IMAX IMAX is a proprietary system of High-definition video, high-resolution cameras, film formats, film projectors, and movie theater, theaters known for having very large screens with a tall aspect ratio (image), aspect ratio (approximately ei ...

cinemas, but it was pulled from the schedule due to cinema closures that started in mid March because of the pandemic restrictions. Digital streaming was made available on

on April 24, 2020.

Reception

Critical reception

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews and ratings of products and services, such as films, books, video games, music, software, hardware, or cars. This system then stores the reviews to be used for supporting a website where user ...

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

, the film has an approval rating of 94% based on 84 reviews. The website's critical consensus, which is a reference to the 1986 Beastie Boys song "

Paul Revere Paul Revere (; December 21, 1734 O.S. (January 1, 1735 N.S.)May 10, 1818) was an American silversmith, military officer and industrialist who played a major role during the opening months of the American Revolutionary War in Massachusetts, ...

," reads, "Here's a Beastie Boys Story they had to tell, about three bad brothers you know so well. It started way back in history -- and for new or old fans, it's a must-see." It has a score of 75 out of 100 on

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, a site that aggregates a normalized rating, indicating "generally positive reviews". Erik Adams of ''

The A.V. Club ''The A.V. Club'' is an online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop-culture media. ''The A.V. Club'' was created in ...

'' gave the film a C+ and criticized it for poor pacing and lacking fun. His review concludes: "There's not a lot of new insights or

Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films". A "sister company" of arthouse film distributo ...

-worthy film-making on offer, but for fans, the documentary will be a reminder of why they got into Ad-Rock, MCA, and Mike D in the first place. It's all there in the outtakes: The Beastie Boys story is simply too big, too strange, too unwieldy for Beastie Boys Story to contain it."

Accolades

References

External links

*
Beastie Boys Story
' on

* {{Apple TV+ 2020 films 2020 documentary films Beastie Boys Films directed by Spike Jonze Apple TV+ original films Films not released in theaters due to the COVID-19 pandemic American documentary films 2020s English-language films 2020s American films English-language documentary films