Stop a Greenwich Village

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.

This is a bittersweet film about family, leaving "the nest", friendships, dreams, hope, & finding yourself. A young man from Brooklyn leaves home to become an actor in 1950's Greenwich Village. Lenny Baker is very good as Larry Lapinsky & Ellen Green is wonderful as his girlfriend. The quirky characters & situations around them add an ambiance to this movie that makes you believe it was filmed in the 1950's, & not the 70's, when it was actually made. A lot of attention was paid to detail & it shows. Shelly Winters is loud, obnoxious, funny & convincing as the typical Jewish mother (I love the scene when she shows up at his apartment with a chicken). This movie makes you wish you could jump into the film & sit with these characters, have coffee with them, ride the subway, go to one of Larry's rent parties & experience the progressive, offbeat world of New York's Greenwich Village in the 1950's.

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.

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.

When I think of this film, I think of my older brother's generation, graduating from high school about 1956, and from college about 1960. Mazursky catches the look of a certain kind of young people of that era, their fashions, their expressions, their masks and identities. There's a sense of confusion and discovery, or rejection of the restrictions of middle class culture and their embracing of a murkily-defined bohemian alternative, and the disruption that brings to their lives, culturally, socially, sexually.

The film also reminds me of my years spent living near and wandering around Greenwich Village, 1966-70. Some of the kinds of people Mazursky shows were still there, ten years older, either mystified or amused or annoyed by the hippie hoards invading them. Honky-tonk, high rents, and mass culture bohemianism had arrived.

Mazursky gets this right. I don't know how this picture would play to those not interested or affected by the sociology time capsule, but I think it still would play.

And hats off to Shelly Winters, once again playing an impossible mother.