The HBO doc 'Yacht Rock' takes a fond, ironic look at how 1970s bands like Steely Dan, Toto and Christopher Cross found a new generation of fans.

As music critic and writer Steve Huey once explained, "from 1976 to 1984, the radio airwaves were dominated by really smooth music." Once known as soft rock, since the mid-2000s pretty much everyone has called it Yacht Rock.

The stress of Thanksgiving is over. Now it's time to heat up leftovers, relax on the couch and enjoy the smooth sounds of a wrongly mocked music genre: yacht rock. The late-'70s songs of Steely Dan, Michael McDonald and Christopher Cross take center stage Friday in the well-crafted Max documentary “Music Box: Yacht Rock: A DOCKumentary.

A nonfiction music film based on a web series that was based on a joke, “Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary” isn’t really about a genre of music as much as it is a bunch of highly skilled musicians who helped make a catalog of expertly produced pop records in the ’70s and ’80s.

A Dockumentary, which assesses soft rock of the 1970s and early ’80s and the musicians who made it while winking at the sound’s re-emergence as a source of ironic enjoyment. Executive produced by Bill Simmons,