In Search of America

First let me say that I remember this film vividly from seeing it as a 10 year old when it first aired. I find it all quaint and sweet..from a time I remember fondly. It's part of a genre of movies from the period addressing changing social concerns: the ecology, anti-war movement, youth culture, changing views on marriage etc... This one, of course, was about narrowing the generation gap. It's the TV Movie version of this, however, with it's silly sweetness and attempt at depth. I am perhaps more tolerant of it as I am a fan of both 60's and 70's TV movies and Hippy/Generation Gap movies of the period. Yes..the music is trite and seems strange now. At the time it fit for a family TV Movie. The film would have been much improved by using more relevant rock music of the day (like The Strawberry Statement). By the way, I ditto the comments about great cast and standout acting by Bridges and Daley. 60's and 70's TV movie regulars McDevitt, Betz, Miles, Duff and Hunter are always worth watching. And yes, it is reminiscent of the Partridge Family in many ways. It seemed so at the time, too.

They don't write dialog like this any more. Here's a sample:

Man: I hope we're not in your way.

Hippie Girl: No, not at all. 'Cause you don't really exist. You, me, all of us. We're just dream particles in a great cosmic jellyfish.

Odd movie with disembodied voices in the background singing, and occasionally chanting, lyrics that vaguely have something to do with the plot.

I bought this film for $1 and my wife and I enjoyed watching it. It's not high art but a kind of funny window into the sixties, and what middle-aged screen writers thought of the younger generation.

One of the problems with popular culture, especially when discussing the popular culture of the 1970s, is that mass media - especially television - is usually about four years behind 'underground' media, primarily music. Many people think the 'Woodstock Generation" remained important throughout the 1970s; actually, it was all over at Altamont in 1970. By 1972, 'underground' rock or the 'counterculture' had moved east to England and Led Zepplin, Black sabbath, and David Bowie, early metal-heads and the so-called 'glam-rockers,' who were all 'peace and love' - not. Neither, in a darkly different vein, was Charles Manson's 'family.'

This obvious pilot for a television show (that, thankfully, was never picked up by the networks) is attempting to come to terms with a culture that was already as withered as yesterday's flowers. The script must have been lying around a few years - by the time it was produced, writer Carlino had already achieved recognition for tough Mafia revenge tales. And the cultural references are all to "Easy Rider" and Woodstock (1969). The music referenced on the soundtrack is actually earlier, 1966/67 - at Woodstock Hendrix, Canned Heat, and Sly and the Family Stone had blasted this kind of folk-pop into oblivion.

The movie is about a middle-class family that goes on the road in order to meet hippies. Wow, man, farout, outasight, it's a groovy mind-blowing happening of a bag. However, politics count for nothing - Vietnam? some place in Asia, right?

This average (meaning stale and vacuous) TV movie is only redeemed by Jeff Bridges' surprisingly mature performance as the young college drop-out who convinces his parents and grandma to 'discover' (hippie) America. All the rest of the performances are standard TV fair by standard TV actors of the time. The director avails himself of some nice location cinematography, but otherwise the film is a poor way to spend 90 minutes.

I knew it was all over when Sal Mineo remarks of a young runaway (who tells the other characters they are not really there): "She's a latent existentialist." Wow, far out, groovy.

A couple extra points for being 'so bad it's funny,' but if you don't care about the '70's TV version of the '60's, stay away.

The late 60's was a different and frightening time and place. Adolescents and adults alike were questioning who they were, why they existed, and whether these gosh-darned flower children kids might just have something. This movie shows all that as suburban Dad, Carl Betz, flower child Jeff Bridges, loose-as-a-goose grandma Ruth McDevitt take off for the road in search of America. Most of the usual made-for-TV cliches and pat solutions are offered, but the mood is so '60's, I didn't mind a bit.

You don't have to spend much time watching this made for TV movie or series pilot or whatever it was intended to be to figure out just what lies in store. The incredibly bad musical score makes its debut from the start. Seriously, if this isn't the worst theme I've ever heard, I certainly can't remember it. While the acting talent is available here, from Jeff Bridges to Carl Betz, Vera Miles, and Sal Mineo, the writing is atrocious and the story is contrived, filled with insipid stereotypes, and an obvious ripoff from Ken Kesey. Why must Hollywood always present tales from the sixties as if the so-called hippies were all unidimensional morons? It's too bad that such an interesting era in our exceptionally conformist social experience is generally depicted by out and out garbage so that the least offensive of the genre is now accepted as reasonably authentic when almost none of it comes even close to the way things really were. The best I've seen to date is a memoir called Looking Back by a guy named Becker, but who else has even heard of it? No one in Hollywood, that's for sure. They're too busy pushing tripe like this groaner of a movie to bother with reality.