But like Arlo ten minutes into singing the damned song, that's not what we came here to talk about. The rest of the movie has a much different and more serious tone. The movie is a low-key but totally serious drama to which Officer Obie and the draft board are the comic relief. The silly bureaucracy of the draft board is a deserving, but easy target for satire.
Instead, the movie is primarily an examination of the problems and shortcomings of the hippies as they flop around aimlessly and self-indulgently through life. Okay, war is bad and the squares are kinda square — but really, how much better and more enlightened are the cool kids?
Alice and Arlo's crowd has thrown off the shackles and restrictions of The Man, but for what? What have you got instead that is better? Consider this a cautionary tale.
Just exactly where does all this new-found "freedom" and free love get you?
For starters, it gets one of their friends dead from dope. This movie was made during the 1960s, the early days of the modern drug culture. The movie was thus one of the first significant examinations of the real consequences of this stuff from within the culture. It doesn't do you much good to avoid a noble death in a stupid war overseas if you're just going to die ignobly at home in the gutter instead.
Now, I wouldn't say that Penn was trying to make quite that much of a Profound Statement. One of the good points of the movie like the song is the modesty of the ambition, as likewise for the original song. Arlo had a point, but he didn't overreach for a cheap stab at Profundity.
The free love idea particularly didn't come out looking so hot either. Probably the thing in this movie that made the biggest impression on me was a scene in which Arlo rebuffed the advances of a young groupie who wanted to have sex with him because he was going to be a record some day. Now, Arlo's red-blooded and all, but he was clearly quietly seriously distressed by this.
The screenplay doesn't have him specifically articulating his dis-ease, but this clearly represented not just a loosening of outmoded restrictions but self-degradation and a cheapening of social bonds. What would a girl such as this be thinking of herself that she's wanting to give her body for the anticipated prestige of telling people that she'd had random, meaningless sex with a guy who has a recording contract?
Article comments
1 - Richard Marcus
Thanks Al, I have to confess that on any of the occasions I've tried watching the movie, that I've never been able to see the point of it, and shut the thing off. I like Arlo and I like the song, but to make a movie out of a song, no matter how long the song is, just doesn't pan out.
I'm sure lots of people will protest your critiques of "hippy" lifestyle, but I have to say any of the people I've met these days who profess themselves to be hippies, seem to not take anything seriously, how they think that they are some sort of alternative lifestyle worth emulating is beyond me.
Communal requires a commitment from all people to an ideal of each person doing something towards contributing to the common good. I've lived with "Hippies" whose concept of that was occasionaly going to the food bank. Not what I'd call an equal share of the work load.
It sounds like the movie Alice's Restaurant, was therefore fairly accurate and unblinkered in its look at this alternative lifestyle of the children of the upper middle class. Not many poor kids ever lay around doing expecting the world to be given to them on a platter.
Good review Al, thanks for the contribution.
Richard
2 - Scott Butki
Good review, Al. I've been watching this movie -
and writing a review of it - in bits and pieces and
expect to finish doing so later this weekend.
3 - Al Barger
Outstanding Brother Butki. I look forward to seeing your observations.
4 - Scott Butki
read on Wikipedia, I think, that Officer Obie figured if he was gonna be portrayed as an idiot he might as well do it himself.
I finished the movie last nite and wrote a rough draft of a review.
I am going to listen first to Arlo's audio commentary - did you listen to that, Al? - in case he says anything more about the song and movie.
5 - Scott Butki
Ah here's the Wikipedia summary of the song and the movie, which is an interesting read.
6 - Al Barger
No Scott, I have not heard the audio commentary. This would, however, be a good opportunity to note that I do not have the DVD to have that commentary. It's called "DVD Review" for the sake of standard Blogcritics formatting, but I actually watched the movie on VHS.
7 - Scott Butki
scandalous.
i haven't followed the movie vs dvd debate but i assumed the dvd review
included those who watched, well, the dvds.
i'll be sure then to include dvd extras on my review to make up
for that
8 - Howard Dratch
Within your asides about those with other views during the turbid and turgid days of the Vietnam war before we lost it, I agree with Richard that it is a good review and a fun, evocative but, ultimately, unsatisfying film (or DVD or VHS). Just as movies from TV shows and from cartoons usually are turkeys.
Looking back at those confused times the movie is an "artifact" and a period piece and, for some of us, a time machine back to those (good?) old days. Life on the hip side rather than the life of my classmates from the South who were either blown to bits or more proud of the picture of their bomber than their family, was, as you say, not much different than the straight folk. Happy/unhappy. Loyal/disloyal. Nice/obnoxious. People are, in the end, human and such is the nature of the film.
9 - Scott Butki
I was thinking it'd be a dvd review if it includes dvd extras and a movie review if it isn't
10 - Mohjho
1. Yes, the song is much more enjoyable than the movie. I watched it once, and tried to forget it.
2. Arlo was also in the movie Roadside Profits. Small cameo, but still amusing.
3. Hippies = Irresponsible lifestyle, lol, duh
The hippie movement of the 60s was a youth movement. Bucking responsibilities was all part of the fun. Most of the hippies I know put down their bongs and picked up a paycheck, started families, bought properties, ete....
Funny how things work out.
11 - Scott Butki
OK, my take on the movie has been published.
It is here
12 - Scott Butki
For two different perspectives on the movie may I direct your
attention to two reviews at DVD Savant.