TV Reviews : An Ambivalent View of the ‘Mamas and the Papas’

It’s hard to know whether to take “The Story of John Phillips and the Mamas and the Papas: Straight Shooter� (Sunday at 10:30 p.m. on Channel 28) as loving musical flashback or cautionary drug tale. Mostly, it’s just a low-key, garden-variety video documentary with absolutely no point of view, though anyone who ever swooned westward to the sounds of “California Dreamin’ � will probably find its vintage performance footage and new interview material interesting in fits and starts.

In a rare analytical moment toward the end, the unseen narrator does tell us that “the life and times of John Phillips represent all that was good and bad about the ‘60s.� The good, of course, was the Mamas and the Papas’ adoption of sublime, clear-cut folk harmony into a counterculture context, hep and hippie-ish enough for the Monterey Pop Festival but square enough for “The Ed Sullivan Show.�

But, as said narrator recalls, “the ‘70s would not be kind to John.� Actually, it’s more like John not being kind to John, with the quartet’s 1968 breakup followed by a slide into heroin addiction (not to mention “10,000 Quaaludes over three or four years�). A doctor at a detox hospital recalls that a gaunt Phillips came in “in such terrible shape that it was questioned from time to time whether he could walk to the cafeteria to eat.�

The comeback isn’t entirely inspirational: Phillips kicked the habit not so much out of love for family or self as the fact that he was facing a possible 45 years in prison for possession. Yet credit him for eventually accepting the “domino effect� of his addiction on his alarmed but nonetheless likewise drug-riddled family: “They all want your attention and all want to emulate your behavior,� he remembers being told.

Director Mark Hall doesn’t know all the ropes of documentary film making--by plunging right into Phillips’ childhood history at the start, he ensures plenty of instant channel switching--but did find the right people (from John Stewart to Dick Clark) to interview. And he may have inadvertently uncovered a Dorian Gray story: In a saga full of balding heads and double chins, former Mama Michelle Phillips--more than two decades after their last chart success--looks far younger now, as if about to regress into puberty.