Poor Arthur Penn. Guy is trying to make a sad, serious film about the decline of Hippiedom through the prism of a dysfunctional marriage (good idea) and he keeps getting tripped up by the too cute and adorable Arlo Guthrie, his cuddly stoner pals, and that lame ass song of his that Penn needed to get the damn film made to begin with!
I am paradoxically happy to report, however, that a lot of the sadness remains in this work and it is those images and moments...the destructive immature mania of James Broderick as hippie patriarch Ray, the poignance of the long final scene where Alice, wonderfully played by Pat Quinn, contemplates the bad decision she's made to marry a schlub, the heartbreaking scenes of the dying Woody Guthrie in Creedmoor Hospital in Queens, Joni Mitchell's elegy for the 60s counter culture sung in a snowy cemetery...that stay with me long after Arlo, Roger, Karin, Officer Obie and all their mindless antics have faded from consciousness. Give it a B minus.
PS...Arlo and Tina Chen are such a dull couple they make John and Yoko look like Tracy and Hepburn.
I am paradoxically happy to report, however, that a lot of the sadness remains in this work and it is those images and moments...the destructive immature mania of James Broderick as hippie patriarch Ray, the poignance of the long final scene where Alice, wonderfully played by Pat Quinn, contemplates the bad decision she's made to marry a schlub, the heartbreaking scenes of the dying Woody Guthrie in Creedmoor Hospital in Queens, Joni Mitchell's elegy for the 60s counter culture sung in a snowy cemetery...that stay with me long after Arlo, Roger, Karin, Officer Obie and all their mindless antics have faded from consciousness. Give it a B minus.
PS...Arlo and Tina Chen are such a dull couple they make John and Yoko look like Tracy and Hepburn.