Adam at Six A.M.

Saw Adam at 6AM decades ago. I believe it was Michael Douglas's first movie and he was still in college when asked to make the movie. The movie gets its name, when Adam starts his trip east in the red sports car and the camera focus on the clock 6 AM. The movie was very low budget. Several scenes in Mo at the home were never cropped and you can see the the lighting and other equipment. They never went back to re shoot. Michael's voice hadn't developed, but you can see his grace and charm even at this young age.

The movie starts to drag about 3/4 through and doesn't pick up.Obvious when the movie was casted, producers wanted the Douglas name even if only the son of Kirk was available. Movie appears to be related to the the graduate.I'm still trying to remember the res sports car, was it and Austin Healey? Reminds me of my TRS 3 in college. I knew I had something in common with Michael Douglas.

Bored with his job as an assistant linguistics professor at a California university--and equally disenchanted with the indifferent woman in his bed--young Adam hears of a relative's funeral in Missouri and hits the highway in his Porsche, in search of the Meaning of Life. The political and socioeconomic issues raised by screenwriters Stephen and Elinor Karpf seem to flare up out of nowhere, while brooding-but-sincere Michael Douglas seems unsure how to respond to the hubbub. The Karpf's main concern, as it turns out, is in finding Adam an understanding woman to love, which makes this 'unconventional' movie just as formulaic as all the other coming-of-age dramas released in the wake of "The Graduate". Professionally done, and with a finale not unlike that of "Five Easy Pieces", released the same year. ** from ****

This is an unusual film for Michael Douglas, and kind of "lost". I wonder if it was ever even released? I rather doubt it's even available on video or DVD today: your only shot at seeing it is late at night on same cable station. Which is how I saw it, many years ago.

Adam is a late 20s college professor having a sort of early mid-life crisis when he decides to spontaneously attend a family funeral in the Midwest. Away from his intellectual/liberal environment and hedonistic lifestyle, he finds life in the small town surprisingly warm and embracing. In time, he has a working class job (light years from his cushy teaching job), friends (Joe Don Baker) and a cute girlfriend for whom he has the major hots, but who is "saving herself for marriage." Adam becomes, for this one summer anyhow, so immersed in this simple down-to-earth lifestyle that he decides to marry the girlfriend and buy a house.

At this point, the film takes a sharp detour...as if ashamed suddenly of the idea that simple hard work, good friends and a loving marriage might be exactly what spoiled pretentious Adam needed all along. So he abruptly decides to "chuck it all" when sent on a mission to buy vanilla ice cream for his fiancé's bridal shower...and skedaddles out of town in his sports car, presumably never to be seen again. (Or maybe to return to his unhappy life as a swinging college teacher.) No closure on the presumably broken-hearted fiancé, who had to be humiliated by his disappearance, or his confused and hurt friends.

For some reason this film has stuck in my mind all these years. I think because up until the final couple of minutes, it almost seems like a pre-Reagan paean to family values...which would have made "Adam" a real oddity in 1970. Some good supporting work from supporting actors. This film also foreshadows the 80s film, "Amber Waves of Grain" with Kurt Russell and Mare Winningham, about a spoiled actor who becomes a farm worker.

If you are up late at night and this comes on...watch it. Something different, and you get to see a very young Michael Douglas.

(BTW: No, the title makes no sense at all.)

A minor cult classic for fans of 70s films. Joe Don Baker is outstanding. I highly recommend it, if you see it in the late-night TV listing.

The person who made the comment that the title of this film makes no sense is incorrect. Of course, the title makes sense. The main character, Adam, is a young college professor who spends the summer working at a blue collar job. Thus, he gets up at 6 a.m. to go to work. The entire movie is about the summer that he spends working at this job. I first saw this film when I was about twelve or thirteen, and I absolutely loved it. It's now a period piece, but it's an excellent period piece. The last shot of this film--which I won't reveal here--is wonderful. I've described it to many, many people over the years as being one of the funniest things that I've ever seen in a movie. I can still remember watching this on television with my brother and my father, and we all laughed hysterically at that final shot.