The Christian Licorice Store

Christian Licorice Store 1971Dir James Frawley ( I've put his name just so you know he directed most of the Monkees TV episodes (Head, being their finest moment) so you get a idea of where this film is coming from. Beau Bridges ( Kane) disillusioned tennis prodigy , meets photographer girlfriend Maud Adams. Nothing much happens with lots of long winded dialogue. It turns out the film Kane is put forward for his the film you are watching. At 1hour ten seconds , Tim Buckley appears singing Pleasent Street ( featuring the lyric Christian Licorice Store) that's the highlight of the movie.

It's a typically dated 70smovie , worth a viewing but mainly for Tim Buckley.

Beau Bridges plays a professional tennis player who is both bemused by and indifferent to his fame and fortune; he's cocky when he's riding high but, when faced with a stronger opponent on the court or when dealing with his long-time coach's death, he becomes detached and morose. Mired in self-alienation, he wakes up one morning after a party in an empty swimming pool (it's that kind of movie). Maud Adams plays Bridges' girlfriend, a successful photographer, and she puts up with a lot (after he treats her badly for missing a parking space, she still tells him she loves him). This introspective drama, directed by James Frawley and written by Floyd Mutrux, is handsomely-produced, artistically shot (by David Butler) and features some flashy editing, but it doesn't add up to much. Mutrux's literate, sometimes sharp and sometimes moving dialogue is far stronger than his plot or his characters. The writer gives Gilbert Roland (as the aging coach) a terrific speech, reminiscing about the good old days of the 1930s, but feckless Bridges is not someone we warm to. Adams looks like a saint (a very beautiful saint) for staying with this man as long as she does. Frawley has attentive eyes--he captures uncanny little bits of life going on around the central twosome that are refreshingly real--but he also sets up a dead-end dream sequence on a white tennis court with black walls that is fatuous padding, and he fails to dodge Mutrux's story clichés (including a tepid finish) so that they stick out obtrusively. ** from ****

While not Lost New Hollywood masterpiece (like, say, Charles Eastman's "The All-American Boy" or Floyd Mutrux's "Dusty and Sweets McGee"), this is one groovy movie. Shot in L.A. during the year (1969) of the Manson murders, it's a glorious distillation of the era: maybe the best of its kind next to Jaques Demy's "The Model Shop," Speaking of Mutrux, I hadn't realized that he wrote the screenplay and co-produced the film. Double bow. And I had no idea Jean Renoir plays himself in a lovely extended cameo. It's an even better "Famous Foreign Director Cameos In a New Hollywood Movie" cameo than Federico Fellini's appearance in Paul Mazursky's "Alex in Wonderland." Definitely one for the time capsule.