John Cusack looks NOTHING like Brian Wilson.

Totally agree, but Cusak still managed to do a decent job.

I hard a very hard time John look nothing like Brian and it made it hard to watch that part of the movie .I could not get in to him Brian Paul lookedd like and so easy relate to that part of the movie. They should have had him wear a wig that would have helped so much

Yes, but he's a good actor, so I didn't care.

I was not hard to adapt to John Cusack or Paul Dano. You realize from the first scene--that youre watching someone else play his life. Brian is too well known. S0,even if they got a total look alike..you'd still KNOW it wasnt him.
I thought the both did good in their roles.

You're so right! His casting detracted severely from what was otherwise a pretty good movie.

Paul Dano and John Cusack were Pohlad's first choices to play Brian Wilson. Responding to criticism over Cusack's physical resemblance to Wilson, Pohlad said that Cusack looked like Wilson during a very particular era, specifically when Wilson appeared in the documentary Brian Wilson: I Just Wasn't Made for These Times (1995). -Taken straight from the trivia section.

I like Cusack a lot, in many of his movies. But he is so out-of-place here, and resembles Wilson NOT AT ALL, it is highly distracting.

The Brian Wilson of the mid eighties looks strangely unlike himself during that period too. It's weird.

I think he had surgery (Landy's idea) and didn't really look the way he does now until he filled out a bit.

"I don't need to believe it's real. I just need to believe it."