Best movie of this year hands down!

Very Cool!!!

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Good movie to visit with your youth and high school days even though this takes place in the early 1900's it still helps to bring back the memories for the viewer. Quality acting and realistic story of life for teens in a simple town some where in the USA. The story has a sensuous undertone and feel as we watch hormones go to work but never really finding closure. The emphasis at that time in that place was being a good boy and girl and if you were not you were known for that too. The movie brings in the crash of 29 and how it changed lives as well as having all that life can offer and not being happy. Wholesome down to earth scenes of family dinners, dances, gatherings and some high school thrown in. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may for time old time is still a flyin for this same flower that lives today tomorrow will be dying applies here...

While a modest hit and the bringer of a career Oscar for Inge, "Splendor In The Gas" in fifties social relevance drama running on fumes; a picture that labors mightily to be a little moving. Beatty is fine in his first film, it was probably enough to make him a star. Natalie Wood is caught straining, too little is given her wild mood swings in the way motivation. Pat Hingle is method hammy in the most one dimensional of the film's characters. The films last quarter, where the cliche's are given some balance (though we learn the two worst have predictably perished by their own folly) and the pain is reconciled, is probably it's best. The poetic coda is too trite but does not offend. Kazan would never find his way into the sixties, and while some misbegotten projects would follow, he was finished as a creative force. His capitulation with HUAC left him something of a pariah in Hollywood, but he never found a real handle on the medium beyond brilliantly executing the written word, and the medium was going beyond that.

One would think that given the title of the film, there would be a sense of fullness and joy that comes with the telling of the story. Instead, this turned out to be one of the more depressing and agonizing pictures one might hope to experience that deals with teenage angst and loneliness. In a way, I was reminded of "Rebel Without a Cause", as young high schoolers are presented, dealing with the emotional detachment of parents too busy with their own lives or having no interest in what their progeny are going through. In that respect, Pat Hingle's character, Ace Stamper turns out to be the most clueless one of the lot here.I'd have to say that Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty turned in virtuoso performances in this film. Both carry their characters through an entire range of emotions dealing with unrequited love and emotional pain, with the requisite happy ending for the couple nowhere to be found. In that respect, this is one of the truly heart rending stories of two people who might have been right for each other, except for the moral and social taboos that thwart their effort to remain together. In a way, I thought Bud's (Beatty) response to Deanie's (Wood) holding out was a bit overwrought; his conversation with the family doctor obviously held no consolation, while his self directed solution to hook up with a loose girl provided no satisfaction.As for Deanie, I thought it tragic that her solid family life didn't offer the kind of foundation she needed to stay grounded in reality over a broken romance. She's dealt another blow to her fragile world view when learning of Bud's marriage and family, and in his own way, it appeared to me that Bud himself never fully recovered from his first romance. Instead of that warm and happy feeling one is left with when people find themselves, this movie explores the consequences of life as it happens when lived, or perhaps more tragically, when life is not lived effectively.

I think this might be one of the most overrated films I've ever seen. To begin with, thank goodness nobody hurt themselves trying to make 1961 look like 1929--I think all they did was borrow some old cars.This hypersexualized and ridiculous movie falls into the _Romeo and Juliet_ trap of confusing hormone- and boredom-driven teenaged lust with love. Bud and Deanie aren't loves-of-a-lifetime: They're first infatuations. Bud is handsome but there is nothing in Beatty's portrayal that suggests he actually loves Deanie instead of just being afraid that he might lose his adorable possession to some other dead-eyed high school boy. His adult love for Angelina, who took him in when he was depressed, displaced, and lonely, seems far more believable even though the movie makes it clear we're supposed to think he settled and gave up his true love for something practical.There is nothing emotionally gripping or even interesting in any of the acting, either. Warren Beatty is wooden and expressionless. Natalie wood swings from dim-witted, overwrought, childishness to overwrought hysterics, but after awhile you just want her to be quiet and go away. I suppose this had its place in 1961 but it hasn't aged very well.