Taking Off

A wonderful American debut from Milos Forman, who transcends a rather schematic premise ('wayward' daughter is actually quite sensible, while bourgeois parents enter a counterculture of pot-smoking and (nearly) wife-swapping orgies) with his wise European eye, which mixes clear-eyed observation with fantasy, implausibility and farce. The lead couple are acted in such a low key, you're astonished at the emotional power they generate, and while the subject matter is quite depressing, Forman's comic benevolence is always foregrounded: the convention for parents of missing children, and the accompanying lesson in parental empathy, is an American classic.

This is the first Milos Forman's movie in America. It's still got the European style, a very special way to describe the story. Bourgeois parents tries to find why their quiet teenage girl ran away from home. It's a story about the gap of generation, between the straight parents and the hippies children. Forman present a funny and tender look at the youth of America of the early seventies. While the teenage girl is very gentle and quiet, the parents, who are afraid she will take drugs, get drunk and plays strip poker. The movie is now a little bit of a kind of oldie film! Just a take a look at all those typical seventies long hairs boys and girls, the way they dressed. Kinda funny, like seeing teenagers in a Doris Day movie of the fifties. There are lot of very funny sequences of the young girls singing at an audition for a show. We can see young Carly Simon in it. There is also a sequence with the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. I like it, even if it's a little bit old today. It's strange to say that, because I was a teenager myself when this film was shot by Forman.

Milos Forman is settling in to America here, learning the ways of rich Puritans. The casting is just about perfect; I don't recall Buck Henry being as expressive--in that deadpan way--in a movie. The scene between Georgia Engel and Lynn Carlin, in which Engel relates stories of her husband's incredible sexual drive is wonderfully funny. The strip poker scene between Henry, Carlin and their guests Audra Lindley and Paul Benedict, that ends with Henry singing an aria, naked, on top of the dining-room table has passed into cinematic legend.

Miroslav Ondricek's camera work is really exceptional; it makes a success of one scene that drags on too long--the therapy group with the participants smoking reefer. Ondricek's ability to give life to interiors is amazing: see how he cuts from the ancestral paintings to the would-be dopers, making comments on both. This man, who turns 70 this year, is a master, and if I just give a partial list of his work you will know what I mean: The Fireman's Ball, If..., O Lucky Man!, Hair, Amadeus.

Milos Forman's first American release is part social satire, part farcical look at two morose, middle-class parents (Buck Henry, Lynn Carlin, both outstanding)

who begin to enjoy life only after their teenage daughter (sad-eyed Linnea

Heacock) runs away. At once funny and touching, Forman and veteran Bunuel

collaborator Jean-Claude Carriere ("Belle du Jour," "Diary of a Chambermaid") concoct a simple story of unexpected depth, a wry comedy that unfolds

gradually, gently lampooning marriage and family life while painting a sensitive portrait of the confused, disenfranchised youth scene of the 1960s. Forman

regular Vincent Schiavelli makes his debut here as a bell-bottomed marijuana

"expert," who carefully instructs a banquet hall full of clueless parents in the fine art of getting high. A young Kathy Bates and a spirited Carly Simon appear

briefly singing at a theatrical audition, while Georgia Engel and Audra Lindley turn in subtle, nuanced performances several years before their television

debuts on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "Three's Company," respectively.

A beautifully observed, underrated gem.

Czech director Milos Forman made his American debut with this sweetly-zonked look at the generation gap, circa 1971. Straight, tightly-wound suburban married couple just outside New York City panic when their teenage daughter runs away...but eventually they tire of looking for her ("She's probably out there having fun," the kid's father says, "so why shouldn't we have some fun, goddammit!"). Scenes of the grown-ups letting loose with marijuana experimentation and strip poker are intercut with teenagers auditioning for a musical, and this is where Forman's true talent comes to the fore (he's mad about faces, and passionate about eccentrics and talent). The well-chosen cast (including Buck Henry, Lynn Carlin, Audra Lindley, Paul Benedict, Georgia Engel and Allen Garfield, with music performances from Ike and Tina Turner, Kathy Bates and Carly Simon) is uniformly excellent, though the thin screenplay (penned by Forman with John Guare, Jean-Claude Carrière and John Klein) doesn't give the actors much to work with--they're all flying high on the exuberance of collaboration. Forman's vision is predictably cockeyed, though his pacing is slow and his staging is sometimes puzzling. For instance, is he holding the singers at the audition in esteem with his camera or using them satirically? The blank faces of the judges are probably meant to get a laugh, but their dumbfounded reactions shouldn't dictate what we're experiencing watching them for ourselves. The movie does take off on occasion, but it isn't from energy (Forman doesn't display a temperament, he's of the low-keyed school of filmmaking); the sheer intrinsic delight of showcased talent gives the picture its charge, ultimately making it a unique, quirky bird all its own. **1/2 from ****