Next Stop, Greenwich Village

This is not a great film but it is sweet and has it's moments. It also has a cast of soon to be stars. While it was interesting to see Shelley Winters when she could still pull off dark hair, it was even more interesting to see a young Christopher Walken and a young Jeff Goldblum. Also seen are Vincent Schiavelli of character actor fame and an almost microsecond uncredited cameo by Bill Murray.

The movie isn't great but for a movie fan its worth the time if for no other reason to see if you can spot all of the soon to be's.

I'm with the room, this film has been sadly overlooked as it was at the time of it's release (even Mazursky champion Pauline Kael was Luke warm) and deserves to be seen.

I think this sort of autobiographical film had sort of been overdone, so Mazurky's film was lumped in as "one of those." What was missed, I think, was his unsentimental, adult perspective on the time and place, on what it meant to be young and bright. He gives us something of what the beak nick world might have been like, unlike the silly portrayals done AT THE TIME.

Lenny Baker, in his only major lead, is excellent along with the entire cast. Christopher Walken makes an impression without the hamming that would later endear him to so many.

I stumbled on this film on USA last night, about 15 minutes in. It was alternately comedic and touching, with Lenny Baker playing a 20-something (Larry Lapinsky) in Greenwich Village in the '50s. Shelley Winter played his mother, who had a knack for showing up at the most inopportune moments and embarrassing her son. Both of them, along with Mike Kellin as Mr. Lapinsky, give excellent nuanced performances.

The central action of the movie is around Larry's attempts to become an actor, and around his friends in the village. The dialog is generally snappy and both dialog and visuals can be out-loud funny at times. 7/10.

During June of 1954 in New York City, I graduated junior high school and, to celebrate the event, joined three of my classmates on a forbidden sojourn to the city's famous Greenwich Village. Exiting the subway station at Christopher street, we were amazed at the apparent ordinariness of this place we'd heard so much about from older adolescents and adults.

In fact, at first glance, nothing extraordinary seemed to be happening there, with the sole exception of more White people being present than four Black teenagers from Harlem were were accustomed to seeing.

For you see, this was the mid 1950's, Dr. Martin Luthor King Jr. had as yet to lead any freedom marches, Southern schools were as yet to be integrated, and in many Southern states Black people were lynched on Saturday nights as town entertainment. But three hours later, we knew that everything we'd heard about Greenwich Village was true and more. For this was a place far ahead of it's time.

In the Greenwich Village of the 1950's, racial integration had been in place for well over two decades. But far more important, forbidden talk of sexual liberation, interracial sex, homosexuality, along with political, artistic and literary freedom at all levels were openly discussed, flouted and displayed for all to see; performed to a background mixture of new age Jazz, early Rock and Roll and Folk Music. Virtually nothing was excluded from the social or musical menu this incredible place had to offer.

I can't speak for the rest of my friends on that day, but I immediately fell in love with the place and remained so, until it's untimely demise at the hands of the high rise-high priced real estate industry toward the mid 1970's. By then, the people who had made the place justifiably famous and notorious for what it was, could no longer afford to live there. So the Village remained,in name only, as it is today: a mere shadow of what it used to be.

Joyfully, director Paul Mazursky has managed to capture on film, a moving snapshot of the social life and time of a remarkable neighborhood, in what was probably the last fifteen to twenty years of it's legitimate life. And I do remember it so well. The rent parties for starving (sometimes talented) artists, the ubiquitous book shops, the coffee houses featuring impromptu poetry readings, the fashion statements (or blatant lack thereof), the mixing and making of all sorts of colorful characters who, even in their farcical attempts to parody themselves, were more alive and real then those who would put them down. This was the Greenwich Village of the 1950's and of legend.

This magical place was for me and many others (as was for the director who produced this film as an ode to his time there), our first real awakening and taste of adult life. And far more important, a fortuitous preparation for the new social order that was, in time, to come.

The place, as it was, is truly deserving of this wonderful little gem of a film.

The endearing qualities of the characters seem very true to the time to me. I grew up in the 50's, and the scenes of his neighborhood were a wonderful backdrop for the times. The family, the friends, and the events that happen are believable and at times most amusing. Shelly Winters is always outstanding and she delivers in her role as the lead character's Mother. The character of Sarah is very beautiful, although by today's standards both of the young characters would not be cast. Not because they lack character, but because they seem like real people, not Hollywood clones.It was a different world as far as social mores and this glimpse into the heart of a young actor dealing with life through humor and love was most enjoyable.