SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

One of my all time favorites.

A Surprisingly Unforgettable Movie!

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

Of course the film "Alice's restaurant" is mainly meant to be an homage to Arlo Guthrie, who plays the leading part. However he was not my primary focus, since my curiosity had been aroused more by the social context of the narrative. Thanks to other visitors of IMDb I discovered the film on the message board of Hair, where it is praised as an accurate portrayal of the 68 generation. I could have been a part of this movement, and wonder if I have missed something. The setting of Alice's restaurant is an abandoned catholic church, which has been bought by Ray and Alice, and becomes the home of an irregular group of hippies. Together they form a loose commune. Just like in Hair (the musical) there is no real plot, but a chain of events which express the overall atmosphere. There is music, free sex, soft drug abuse and some harassment by conservative bumpkins. In the background the war in Vietnam looms, since most of the male hippies are eligible for compulsory military service. This uncertain future and the outlook of an early death may be a factor explaining the hedonistic attitude of the group. Every day should be a party, and there is a lack of discipline. For instance, their garbage is simply dumped along the road. Alice is devoted to the prosperity of her restaurant, and becomes increasingly frustrated by the irresponsible behavior of the others. She gets little support from her boy friend Ray, who suffers from impatience and a somewhat violent nature. He clearly has leadership qualities, and entrepreneurial greediness. Although Alice needs him, he hardly seems to be her ideal partner. Evidently we are supposed to identify with Guthrie, who plays the friendly and responsible youth. He rejects sexual intercourse with a teenage fan and with an older Maecenas, and finds his own Yoko Ono. He regularly visits his dying father, the illustrious Woody Guthrie. A climax is the medical examination for the military service, where Arlo pretends to possess a violent attitude. In secret he hesitates whether he will refuse service. Eventually his conviction for dumping garbage helps him to be rejected - which makes you ponder. In conclusion the film is a challenging but not political produce. For instance, the group was not involved in squatting, like in the film "The anarchist cookbook". For Ray actually bought the church and had the capital to renovate it. Probably neither Guthrie nor United-Artists / Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had the desire to provoke. The necessity to promote Guthrie limits the critical scope of the film to a moderate appeal for peace. The Swedish film Tillsammans (Together) describes life in the commune in the same vein, but gives a better elaboration on the social themes (sexuality, meditation, consumerism, socialism, durability). And Strawberry Statement is superior in portraying social resistance and protest. If you like such films, consider seeing my other reviews. Nevertheless, Alice's restaurant is worth watching.

In "Alice's Restaurant, Arthur Penn exposes the rubbish (that is the correct word here) of aimless aspects of the sixties counterculture without putting down the vitality and importance of playfulness. He does this by posing the intelligent and serious young man Arlo Guthrie and Pat Quine playing Alice against Alice's workshy husband Ray, played a tad heavily by James Broderick, and an aimless community of people skirting life at the former church made restaurant.Director Penn contrasts bright and colourful New England landscape and towns with revolting and ugly icons and rituals of late sixties counterculture. Mr. Penn rightly avoids a big statement by sharing simple experiences interpreted with Guthrie's intelligent good humour. The smallness of the film makes it a great film. An example of this and an expression of the essential kindliness behind the film is the real Officer Obie, Williams J. Obanheim, police chief of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, portraying himself. His Norman Rockwell iconic look (he had posed for the artist who lived in Stockbridge) plays well against the icons of Arlo and his friends.Cinematography by Michael Nibbia is intricate and imaginative. Editing by Dede Allen, one of the most important in cinema history, flows like most of the script by Mr. Penn and gifted screenwriter Venable Herndon. The script is like orchestration of the famous, splendid Arlo song.Production, custom, set design, and other aspects are perfect. This is major and loving effort. Peter Seeger and Lee Hayes indicate the utter seriousness of the time depicted here. Cold, hard images for New York City and austere blue-green scenes in Woody Guthrie's hospital room are simply two indicators of the background. Serious exposure of drug addiction in 1969 when Mr. Penn made this film was accurate, timely, honest, and necessary. This film is not a gloss on a deadly time. I like this movie even more than I like "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Little Big Man", both superb movies.Joni Mitchell's song "Songs to Aging Children Come" is the actual theme song of this marvellous film about a tragic moment in our lives. Emment Walsh has a great scene. I did not much like psychedelic and other countercultural signs and symbols. I used to complain about not knowing how to live as a Danish Modern person in a psychedelic world. My former wife used to go to any concert within two hundred miles that Arlo Guthrie gave. I grew a little tired of him, but I love the stories that inform his life. I like the persona of his sister in interviews. These are serious people who know how serious play is.

This film is a high point of the alternative 60's cinema, that marked the end of that decade through films such as: "Head", "Trip","Bonnie & Clyde", "Blow-Up", and most notably "Easy Rider". This portrayal of rock'n'roll, free wheelin' lifestyle, is differently put in each of these movies, but Alice's restaurant is special. This is the movie not out of the novel or a short story, but out of a song, popular "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" by Arlo Guthrie, and it plays well on screen too. It's tripy, it's funny, and funny in a way that only life can direct it to be, it's political, but gently so, and it's making a point. A point about life, a point about music, a point about society and war, and most importantly a point about drugs. This picture is one of it's kind, and it will never fade with age. Arthur Penn did a good one here as well, and it probably came out the way it did because of Penn and Guthrie, and their unique talents combining. Brilliant!

Arlo Guthrie's hilariously mordant 20 minute story song gets adopted into an affably whimsical, episodic, occasionally funny and ultimately quite downbeat and sobering free-form feature by director Arthur Penn that astutely captures the key issues and concerns of the 60's hippie counterculture: dodging the draft, smoking grass, getting hassled by the pigs, being persecuted by grossly intolerant, narrow-minded, repressive straight conformist squares, trekking all over the country to find your true self, and defying everyday social conventions so you can do your own thing, man. The rambling, just barely there plot centers on the winningly droll, breezy and irreverent Guthrie's pilgrimage through the counterculture, a bizarre, eventful, eye-opening journey of self-discovery that reaches its peak when Arlo gets arrested for illegally dumping trash, thus making Arlo ineligible for wartime service in the army due to his disreputable status as an unrehabilitated criminal (the scenes at the army center are riotous, with M. Emmet Walsh in a gut-busting early role as the gruff Group W sergeant whose staccato motormouth way of talking renders everything he says incomprehensible).Police chief William Obanheim appears as himself and proves to be a hugely likable good sport by allowing himself to be the endearingly humbled recipient of a few right-on japes made about uptight authority figures. "Glen and Randa" 's Shelley Plimpton has a nice cameo as a cute groupie who hits on Arlo at a party. The film's precise, clear-eyed portrait of the painfully gradual disintegration of flower power idealism and the cynicism and disillusionment that followed in its wake nowadays seems all too grimly true and prescient, with the volatile relationship between vulgar, boorish, obnoxious swinger James Broderick and his frustrated, irritated wife Pat Quinn (they play Ray and Alice Brock, the owners of the titular restaurant) brilliantly reflecting the turbulence and capriciousness of the period. Somewhat erratic and uneven, with a shaky tone that uneasily shifts between comedy and drama, this quirky, laid-back, naturalistic historical curiosity piece provides a lyrical and poignant time capsule of the 60's that for all its admitted imperfections nonetheless remains haunting and effective.