In Search of America

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.

This movie purports to show a middle class family's attempt to figure out what is "going down" in the America of the late 1960's. Their trip to a rock festival is as far as their refurbished old bus gets. Without exception, the characters are superficial stereotypes.

If you want to know which well-established Hollywood actors were desperate for a paycheck in those days,.. just look at the credits. Sal Mineo, I had forgotten just how badly his career had hit the skids! Thank God, his career rebounded before his untimely death.

The writers on this television turkey were clueless. Outside of doing weed, their insights into the "hippie movement" were laughable.

I bought this title at Sam's Warehouse in Lithgow New South Wales for 2 dollars. I got 2 movies with Jeff Bridges in them. I really love Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski and Ruthless and other things for which he has become legend. I was interested to see stuff from his early career. This was a TV Movie in a boxy format (cool) and previously in Black and White. The film was washed with a bit of colour, which was a bit strange but gave it an interesting blast from 'the worn out' past appearance. Visual Quality aside this was a total knockout. I took the evocative rocket back to the late sixties practically instantaneously. It wasn't just the "Right On's" and "Far Out's", it was that the costume and hair was so right, even though it was the early seventies mediated by film. The aimless pack-wandering of the stoned and the initial parenty reactions seemed so right. It was interspersed with some genuine rock festival footage, which enhanced the authenticity. This film has the right look. The plot line was utterly ridiculous however.

I'm giving this five points out of ten just for its value as a museum piece. In 1970 people feared this was the future, and by 1980, with the coming of Reagan people laughed that this was ever the past.

It revolves around a family that basically drops out of American middle class life and decides to roam around in a bus. The family consists of two forty-something parents (Carl Betz and Vera Miles), grandma (Ruth McDevitt), and the one who instigated all of this, son Mike (Jeff Bridges). Mike decides to drop out of college after one year and go find himself instead and see how he relates to other people - nice work if you can get it.

19 year-olds have done this before, it is nothing new, and usually after a year of bagging groceries for minimum wage with a boss that is obnoxious to you because skills wise you are extremely replaceable, college begins to look attractive again to said drop-outs. The weird part is that Mike manages to convince his in-the-prime-of-their-wage-earning-years parents to dump their jobs and their possessions and roam around in a 1928 bus! I mean, at least the Partridge Family had a reason - they were professional singers and a big family! And from the opening scenes Mike's parents have been doing well - big house, big yard, all the things people work all their lives to get. This was unbelievable premise number one. Number two is the grandma herself. It just is not believable when one generation talks like a member of an entirely different generation. Where did grandma learn "You turned him off with that hurt parent routine just when he was opening up to you" anyways? Just like I won't wake up tomorrow knowing Spanish, an elderly woman living with her kids is not going to talk that way and it just seems silly.

Then once on the road there are the people that the family runs into. There's a woman living off the land playing guitar by the side of the road who asks "Why are you Mike? Are you real?". I'd like to ask her when she gets hungry, how do you know food is real? How do you know hunger is real? Somehow I think she'd quickly become unattached to her annoying existentialism when presented with some corn on the cob.

Then there is another woman (a very young Tyne Daly) who decides to give birth in the woods because "it just seems more real". Yep, and doctors and biomedical engineering seem very real if something goes wrong.

I think you get the idea. I thought this thing was a scream (as in funny) when I was 13. The only thing missing was the dad getting lost (we only had maps in those days, no GPS) and asking Billy Jack for directions! I wonder when they got back home if the Manson Family had moved into those "groovy" digs they left abandoned? Watch it for the fun of it. There actually was a counterculture once upon a time and this was it. One more thing, do you think the Koch brothers watched this in their youth, it scared the living daylights out of them to think everyone might just follow this example, and thus hatched their plan to turn us all into wage slave robots? Nah, they're probably just greedy.

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.