Taking Off

The few dramatic scenes aren't bad at all - a precursor to The Ice Storm even. But then there is the musical crosscutting that occupies the first half hour and change and must have seemed like a cultural expression at the time. The smug comedy of rolling a blunt for the squares is also an embarrassment. Of course, hindsight is 20/20.

The first American film from the great Milos Forman and it has a similar feel to his great Czech New Wave movies. It's an interesting comedy about the way square old people view the hip young people. Worth seeing if only for a brilliant scene where Mr. Vargas instructs a room full of those square old people on how to smoke pot.

It sometimes feels a little bit meandering, but there are some really skewering segments here that do a good job of painting a darkly comedic portrait of generational clashes.

Milos Forman's American debut was one of seven films Universal financed in the hopes of accidentally producing anther "Easy Rider". They gave promising young directors $1 million each to make a film with complete control over the outcome. Forman crafts a biting satire of the sterility of middle class American existence, that, like the other films Universal financed, was not another "Easy Rider".

Funny , innovative & different!!! different point of view about hippiesm's effects , wich has been less considered!!!

Touro

Offbeat, episodic film dealing with the hippie boomer culture clash with the older 'establishment'. Subject matter may not have felt so familiar at the time of release, but the intriguing structural choice of intercutting the young generations peaceful embrace of the 'new wave' starkly contrasted with the elders' awkward, shambling attempts to reconcile gives the film a unique flavour (it helps that the music in the interludes is pretty great, especially Bates' haunting solo). Fascinating.

Fim de semana especial Milos Forman (1932 - 2018) filme #2 Essa é a prova que não foi os EUA que decaiu com o cinema do Forman, mas sim o cinema comercial. Melhor papel do Vincent Schiavelli EVER. DVD Versátil O Cinema da Nova Hollywood

I believe this is Forman's first movie in English, and the style is still very Czech New Wave - kind of mellow and laid-back but also edgy and satirical. In a way prophesying his famous adaptation of Hair, it deals with the generation gap, with runaway kids as a metaphor for the disconnect between the stuffy adult establishment and weed-smoking, free-loving baby-boomers. It certainly picks a side, too.

86.500

I'm having difficulty understanding where much of this film's praise comes from. I very much enjoy examinations of the counterculture and the generational rifts it brought forth, but I found much of this to be a slog to sit through.

86.875

Ok. It's fairly slow, and Forman gleefully cannibalizes his own Czech films (most obviously his short "Konkurs"). On the other hand, there is Kathy Bates' (in her first film) wonderful song. And the pot-smoking scene, of course, is hilarious.