The Man Who Styled Fantasy Into a Lifestyle

Read Time:5 Minute, 14 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
The Donn of Tiki
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Genre: Documentary, History, Biography
Year Released: 2024
Runtime: 1h 40m
Director(s): Alex Lamb, Max Well
Where to Watch: playing at the Laemmle NoHo 7 from Dec 5-11, 2025, with a 2026 VOD release

RAVING REVIEW: THE DONN OF TIKI sets out to do something bolder than the standard lifestyle documentary. Instead of creating a nostalgic highlight reel of bamboo décor, hurricane glasses, and island-themed escapism, this film goes directly after the myth. Donn Beach — original architect of the tiki bar and one of the most unapologetically self-constructed men in American hospitality — lies at the center of a world built on exaggeration, reinvention, and pure spectacle. The film’s ambition is clear from its opening minutes: it wants to peel back layers of invention without flattening the sheer charisma that made Beach a cultural force in the first place.

What sets this apart from other documentaries about lifestyle movements is its structure. Many films born of niche communities tend to fall into reverence, turning their subjects into flawless pioneers whose influence can’t be questioned. This one rejects that from the start. Directors Alex Lamb and Max Well aim for a portrait that strikes a balance between admiration and interrogation. They gather bartenders, historians, collectors, designers, family members, and cultural commentators to shape a story that acknowledges Donn’s impact while confronting the blurred lines he left behind.

Beach’s life is inherently cinematic. He crafted his persona as carefully as his cocktails, embellishing military adventures, romantic escapades, business dealings, and island wanderings until the stories became more famous than the truth. The documentary explores the idea that he might have been both an unreliable narrator and a master showman. Rather than scolding him for bending reality, the film tries to understand why he did it — and why the world wanted those stories to be true.

One of the film’s strongest elements is its use of recovered audio recordings of Donn himself. Instead of relying solely on second-hand anecdotes or promotional mythology, the film lets Beach speak directly, even if his stories occasionally clash with documented facts. His voice becomes a blend of confession, performance, and half-remembered legend. This creates an authenticity that cannot be fabricated; the subject becomes a guide to the labyrinth of his own mythmaking.

Visually, the film adopts a warm, stylized style without overwhelming itself with aesthetics. Archival materials, newspaper clippings, vintage photography, bar ephemera, and era-appropriate animation give the story a lived-in quality. It never becomes a catalog of memorabilia, nor does it treat the imagery as mere set dressing. Instead, the visual approach mirrors the narrative priorities: colorful, playful, and historically grounded without slipping into parody.

Where the film excels is in excavating the cultural complexity surrounding tiki itself. In recent years, discussions about appropriation, representation, and the commercialization of imagined island cultures have become louder — and the documentary doesn’t pretend those conversations aren’t happening. It avoids finger-wagging moralism, instead contextualizing tiki’s rise within twentieth-century escapism, post-war fantasy, and the American tendency to create themed realities that gloss over uncomfortable truths. This positions Donn not as a villain or a saint, but as a figure caught between creativity and entrepreneurship, and the inherited blind spots of his era.

Figures like Jeff “Beachbum” Berry and Josh “Shag” Agle provide perspective on tiki’s evolution from a mid-century novelty to a modern enthusiast movement. Their insights help bridge the gap between past and present, showing how Donn’s influence persists even as the culture surrounding it continues to change. These segments also highlight how the modern tiki revival often attempts to honor the craft — the cocktails, the décor, the theatricality — while acknowledging the need for more thoughtful cultural framing.

The heart of the documentary, however, lies in the contradiction between Donn Beach, the man, and Donn Beach the legend. The film never claims to solve every mystery or straighten every contradictory anecdote. Instead, it suggests that the contradictions are the point. Donn built a global subculture from the ground up, blending ingredients, stories, and atmospheres into an experience people could lose themselves in. Whether each story he told was true becomes less important than the way those stories made patrons feel. The film’s greatest strength is that it recognizes this without letting charm overshadow accountability.

It’s lively, sharply constructed, well-researched, and never content to settle for surface-level nostalgia. The filmmaking team took a subject who could have easily been flattened into an icon and instead delivered a portrait with texture, humor, contradictions, and humanity. It’s rare for a documentary to understand the appeal of escapism without getting lost in it. THE DONN OF TIKI ends not with a definitive answer about who Donn Beach truly was, but with something more intriguing: the idea that the truth behind a legend can be just as fascinating as the legend itself.

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[photo courtesy of SURF MONKEY FILMS, BEACHCOMBER PRODUCTIONS, SUBMARINE ENTERTAINMENT]

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