Go Ask Alice

Ordinary 15-year-old teenage girl, feeling like an outcast at a new high school, falls in with the stoner crowd after being offered hallucinogens at a party. Eventually, she's a runaway living on the streets and, after returning home to her well-meaning but naïve parents, is stuck with a bad reputation among her peers--and labeled a 'fink' when she turns in a fellow teen druggie. TV-made "message movie", adapted from the fictional cult book by Anonymous (Beatrice Sparks), purports to pack a punch, but instead seems tentative and a bit awkward (this mostly due to the inexperienced younger actors in the cast). William Shatner (as Alice's natty father) and Andy Griffith (as a priest who works with dopers and drunks) seem to be cast for their name value, although both do solid work in small roles. Jamie Smith Jackson handles the lead with sensitivity and sincerity, and the picture gets a solid B for effort.

This movie would only be appealing to me if I were on drugs just like the main character Alice (Jamie Smith-Jackson) was. At times, I could barely follow the story line because the scenes jumped around quite a bit. In these scenes, the acting seemed as if the actors will still reading off the scripts. The emotion just wasn't there. The characters just stood there, said their lines, and a new scene was up. The jumping from one scene to the next caused some editing problems. Not enough of the story was told. For example, when Alice meets Chris (Jennifer Edwards) in the shop. Alice is dressed and her hair is done. The next scene Alice and Chris are dressed like twins with their hair ironed. I was confused on how she would change so fast. The dialogues between all the characters were short and not a lot of important things were said. One line was, ` Now you're holding,' said by Jan (Ayn Ruymen) and then it was the end of that scene. The movie didn't grab my attention. This may have also occurred because I read the book before hand. The movie switched a lot of the scenes around and removed some of the characters. But they can only do so much with a movie taken from a book.

In the early 1970s, America was still in denial about drugs. Like the parents of Alice in this film, "other" kids use drugs and the risk to their own kids is minimal. So, this film where the fictionalized "girl next door" and her fall into drug dependence is meant to wake up folks to the potential horrors of drugs.

Jamie Smith-Jackson stars as Alice, though oddly established actors like William Shatner, Ruth Roman and Julia Adams are listed at the top of the credits--and Jamie in the middle. I say this is odd because Shatner, Roman and Adams really were barely in the movie at all and the film is about Alice! As for these screen veterans, Shatner and Adams especially did great impersonations of blocks of wood. Perhaps the film made them too out of it--and they were a bit hard to believe as their characters weren't fully established. As for newcomer Smith-Jackson, she did a pretty good job helming this film.

The big star of the film, however, is the writing. The story didn't come off as trite or that whitewashed (at least for a made for TV movie) and was good entertainment and a nice public warning about drugs. A very good and well made film overall. And, considering I have worked in drug rehab and with prison populations, I have seen first hand the horrors that might befall those who make the choice to use drugs of all types--including alcohol.

I had to view this movie as part of a drug prevention program in junior high school('73-'74). I was between 12 and 13 years old at the time. The early 70s were turbulent and the drug culture was making its way to small town America. Unfortunately, the movie, in my opinion, made the drug scene seem cool while the straight kids were portrayed as "geeky". I personally thought that Alice was the coolest person in the world! I think the film could have achieved more balance and probably been more effective as "drug prevention" material had it presented the straight kids in a more appealing light. While I cannot say that it was the catalyst to my own "issues", it certainly did fan flames that were smoldering. I rated it 9 because watching it is nostalgic and I do think it is a fair representation of the drug culture during that time in history...not a 9 for it meeting its original intent...in that respect I don't think it succeeded. Most of the girls I knew wanted to be like Alice...including me!

The movie was decent, but it left so much of the amazing imagery out. Also, the book really examines Alice's relationships with people and her feelings of loneliness. The movie was not personal enough. There is an intimacy in reading Alice's diary that draws you in and makes you really experience what she felt. I thought the movie approached this too much as a public service announcement.