Taking Off

I saw this movie on it's original release and was mightily impressed. I'd previously seen Forman's "The Fireman's Ball" and liked the quirky style that he repeats so well with this one. The tale of the confused parents trying desperately to understand their "wayward" daughter is gently told but is bitingly satirical. I will never forget scenes of the parents attending the seminar on how to smoke a joint and the convention for the parents of fugitive children. So where has this movie gone? I checked out the on line video store here in the UK to find that it was deleted in 92. Great shame, it's a classic.

I remember seeing this on tv years ago. The scene that stands out in my memory is the one where, at a seminar, Paul Benedict (Mr. Bentley from Tv's The Jefferson's) schools a group of middle aged parents on the proper way to smoke marijuana. They do this so that they may better understand their children. A scene that really belongs in a late 60's/early 70's time capsule. It is a halarious classic scene that alone makes the film worth seeing. Hopefully this title will be out on video soon.

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.

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.

I first saw this in 1989. It was old then, but nearly 20 years later its just as fresh and witty. Superb sound editing, great comic set pieces (the how to smoke a joint scene or the black salute), poignant (finding the smokes in the Jeannie's room with "Even the white horses" playing), the music performances (Ode to a Screw) and such acute observation of American Society. Nothing is missed: the comic potential of the fact that there is a "Society for the Parents of Lost Children(SPLC)", the realization that it is the parents who are lost; the lucrative potential of the counter culture and the "establishment's" realization of this (best seen in the hilarious speech by Jeanies boyfriend toward the end). Much of the comedy is drawn from the characters' little crises in their lives and their attempts to solve them, but it is always a warm and affectionate comedy. Forman likes these people, he likes America, he's willing them on, every slightly misguided step of the way.