Real to Reel screening - review - FAMILY BAND: THE COWSILLS STORY by Bill Filipiak and Louise Palanker

Surely one of the darkest stories of one hit wonder bands of the sixties (there were so many), The Cowsills for a short while were nothing short of a phenomenon. With a string of Top 40 hits and countless guest appearances on elite TV shows in the States, they were quite simply America’s biggest and happiest singing family. Just when it seemed nothing could possibly go wrong, they stopped being America’s sweethearts and their popularity crashed faster than the speed of light. 

Filipiak and Palanker, with direct backing from the family, aim to dig deeper into their stories and reveal personal struggles and conflicts with one another. There is a biographical part and a more spiritual soul searching of the family members, where they try to deal with dark past traumas and understand why The Cowsills were plagued by tragedy and failure. This in turn becomes an investigation on their parents, and in particular their relations with their abusive and violent father whilst, disappointingly, the figure of the mother who was almost forced into their son’s rock and roll band – in a ‘you gotta be square to be hip moment’ like pop music has never seen. 

But that is not the only imperfection that plagues Family Band. Aside from a lack of homemade footage shot at the time and a heavy reliance on Youtube clips that looks awfully pixelated when projected, some of the shots taken by Filipiak and Palanker themselves looks pretty amateurish. In other words, it gives a messy stylistic feeling to the film. And sadly, the story is widely unbalanced and inconclusive. There is no real structure or backbone and that becomes very relevant in the second part when, after the biographical tale of rise and fall is taken care of, there is no order and meticulousness in the way in which the documentary is shaped. 

Seemingly, the filmmakers worked on this film for almost ten years, and still were not able to come up with clear conclusions. A reunion for a national anthem performance at a Red Sox game hardly feels like the kind of satisfactory coda to the film. If the story of The Cowsills is one of those potentially interesting dark stories and one of music’s best kept secrets, Family Band is the typical documentary that is simply not able to do anything with it.