Alice's Restaurant
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Movie Reviews of Alice's Restaurant
Movie Review: A memory of idealism & shadows
Summary: 5 Stars
As another Thanksgiving approaches, those of a certain age invariably hear the strains of "Alice's Restaurant" playing in their heads. Which means I'll be watching this somewhat uneven but thoughtful movie once more, reacquainting myself with what are now legendary days. I'm sure they seem a bit implausible & unreal to those who didn't live through the times ... but rest assured, the shambling, rough-edged, absurdist tones are a fairly accurate evocation of those days.
We all know the basic story: how Arlo was arrested for littering, and how that criminal blot on his record made him unfit for the draft. What's interesting are the two counterpoints at work here, from the director's more critical & judgmental eye, to Arlo's mellow retrospective in the commentary. Which is closer to the truth?
Well, both of them are, and that's what gives this movie its lasting impact. It's all too easy to dismiss it as dated, but those who do so are really missing the larger picture. Because the intersection of idealism & experience, hope & loss, despair & renewal, is one that every generation faces. It's just that such things were writ very large indeed in the 1960s.
So we see the naive but determined hope of Arlo & his friends to create a newer world, one that's free of the hypocrisies & betrayals of the past. Again, it's easy to dismiss this from a more cynical distance -- but young people really did believe that transformation was possible, and did their best to live as if it had already taken place. It might have proven an impossible dream, but it was a beautiful & positive one.
And we also see how the basics of human nature couldn't be denied, especially with the central character of Alice. I knew hippie earth mothers like that -- but as a naive young man myself, I couldn't see how the burden of living such an archetypal role was more than most flesh-&-blood could bear for any length of time. Even hope takes its toll.
Which brings us to the most moving scenes, the funeral in the snow & the disintegration of their brief communal moment. Never was a song more aptly chosen than Joni Mitchell's "Songs to Aging Children Come," and never was it more heartbreaking. For me, that scene always brings to mind the last lines of James Joyce's "The Dead," with snow falling upon the universe, upon the living & the dead.
And then we see as the temporary family pulls apart, when Ray's need to control things & keep everything captured in the amber of one instant destroys the very thing he sought to preserve. Is there a sadder sight than the drive away from the church, with Alice standing forlornly among the bare trees?
Yet as Arlo's commentary track from decades later shows, it wasn't quite as bleak as all that in the long run. Here's the other truth that's revealed over time: even though such vital, creative movements burn & fade all too quickly -- the Romantics, the Transcendentalists, the Beats, the 1960s, to name just a few -- their spirit outlives those who pronounce their dismissive obituaries. In countless places across the globe today, young people discover William Blake, Thoreau, Jack Kerouac, Dylan. And the spark is rekindled once more, and hope rises like a star in the darkness.
Most highly recommended!
Movie Review: Alice's Restaurant: A Vision of Joyful Abundance
Summary: 5 Stars
The excellent-quality Alice's Restaurant DVD is a cultural gem! Thanks to audio commentary by Arlo Guthrie himself, Alice's Restaurant merits nomination as the greatest movie ever about the 60s or, for that matter, any time of profound social and spiritual change! What adds human depth to this movie is that many people involved in the real-life drama are here, in the same locations, playing themselves!The 60s social/intellectual/spiritual divide is illustrated in Alice's Restaurant by this insane question: can anyone who dumps litter be sufficiently moral to help kill people in another land? The social divide of the 60s has additional clarity in Alice's Restaurant because the movie director was in one ideological camp and Arlo Guthrie was in the other! In addition, an extremely valid spiritual dimension is provided to the story because Alice's restaurant was in a church; a fertile and far-reaching symbol! It makes the movie and real-life story into one wonderful (but never utopian) heart-warming adventure!
The movie has an amazing number of dimensions. What amazes most, however, is the Alice's Restaurant song, on which the movie was partly based. It still sounds wonderfully fresh and naïve! It maintains its power because it is not only a celebration of the genuine joys of life, love, and friendship but also an indisputable anthem that fully affirms the great natural value of simply having fun in life when you can `get anything you want'. It seems a totally innocuous, irrelevant song ... yet, that remains its overwhelming strength rather than its weakness. After the movie, how life-affirming and universally joyous an anthem the song becomes!
My hat is off to you Mr. Guthrie! Thank you!
Movie Review: I WANNA SEE BLOOD AND GUTS AND VEINS STICKING OUTTA MY TEETH... I WANNA KIIIILLLL!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie was made in the late sixties, which was a time when Rock and Roll was great, but for the most part rock and roll movies weren't so great.
Arlo Guthries ALICES RESTRAUNT may be the exception (maybe one or two others..but anyway).. This movie captures the fun of that classic ARLO GUTHRIE rant, about thanksgiving, littering, and the Draft (and, check out the title of my review, that too). NOW- the live track that A.G. recorded manages to tell the whole story in seventeen minutes, and I have got to tell you, that for the years and years of hearing that tune every Thanksgiving, I had painted a somewhat different picture of the story.
The movie adds a lot of details, and extends the plot somewhat, to make it proper film length. None of this hurts in any way. Arlo Guthrie is very funny in the film (those Guthries were a witty bunch anyway) -and we get a good view of sixties subculture, from a sideview of Guthries counter culture, within a counter culture.
I used to have this on video, but my moms copied over it with the last episode of Seinfeld in the late nineties (der)... I haven't seen the movie since.
Arlo himself wrote a review for this one, asking us to please wait on this release until he releases it himself. MAN... I wanna help, but he wrote that review five years ago.
Well- if you ain't familiar with Alices Restraunt at all, you should get the CD. After all, the original story is told in song, and is capital H hillarious... (especially those mean and nasty father rapers) The movie manages to seperate itself a little from what makes the song great, but in itself, the movie is pretty great too.
Movie Review: I'm giving it 5 stars on spec cuz i think it'll be wonderful when i finally feel i can buy it.
Summary: 5 Stars
Listen to Arlo Guthrie.
It's his gentle genius, after all, which inspired those utterly unforgettable lyrics along with the music, the memories, the laughs . . . and now, the movie. Don't buy this movie until the Big Business money men behind it, MGM/UA, allows Arlo's small company to purchase the DVD at a decent wholesale price. In other words, don't buy this movie until MGM/UA makes it possible for Arlo's company to sell this movie through their retail outlet. Only seems fair, doesn't it?
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And Arlo? Thanksgiving is coming up in another week or so. At my home, with my kids, for years, we've listened to to the entire Alice's Restaurant saga sometime after turkey and before unconsciousness. You're a fixture, a part of the holiday in my home, kinda like the Grinch That Stole Christmas on December 24th. I bet it's so in many, many other homes as well.
I'll definitely wait until MGM/UA makes this right by you before i buy it.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Movie Review: GOING HOME
Summary: 5 Stars
I had not seen this movie since the first time I viewed it almost 40 years ago....I was expecting some kind of rollypolly, wacky 60's film that I thought I remembered. I was wrong. This is a marvelous movie! True, there are some outdated scenes, but this movie took me home to that place I lived in when I was 18 yrs old and waiting to get drafted. It reminded me of my - and my generation's - beliefs and ideals that fortuneately some of us still hold today. And if that wasn't enough, the movie cuts through alot of the sex-drugs-rock&roll pre-conceptions that many younger people today have about the 60's and shows the deep and often conflicting relationships that people had while trying to live out their ideals. This is a wonderful movie to watch, not only for those of us who lived through it, but also for those who want to know what it was really like.