American Graffiti, la suite

"American Graffiti" while overpraised, is certainly one of the best films of the early 70s. It made tons of money and jump-started the careers of many stars. So, naturally they made a sequel--but why? At the end of the original it told us what happened to the main characters--there was absolutely no surprises here. That being said it's an OK movie.

The different types of screen sizes are nice--70mm for the race car sequences; small, hand-held for the Vietnam sequences; multiple screens for Candy Clark and the hippies and regular size screen for Howard and Williams "normal" couple. But, storywise, there was nothing new here and the different screen sizes can only hold you interest for a while. It was just an average movie--but a big let-down from the original. This was not a big hit when it was released--it disappeared quickly.

This is mostly a forgotten movie--as it should stay.

'More American Graffiti' is a worthy follow up to it's predecessor 'American Graffit' Back again for this episodic slice of sixties nostalgia is Paul Le Mat as Drag racer John Milner and his racing exploits and the cute subplot involving the 'Swedish girl'

Bo Hopkin's and Charles Martin Smith's Exploits in Vietnam and Smith's recurring methods to get sent home are hilarious but ultimately tragic.

Ron Howard's marriage which is verging on break up amid the draft burning riots.

the ever likable Candy Clark's exploits as a go-go dancer in San Francisco and her 'Trips' Look out for Harrison Ford as a quick Cameo as a Traffic Cop.

From a technical standpoint 'More American Garffiti' is an interesting film as the film 'experiments' with Aspect Ratio's for instance the Vietnam sequences are 16mm 1.37 : 1 Candy Clarks San Francisco exploits are a mixture of 2.35 : 1 with 'Woodstock' like split screen effects. Ron Howards scenes are 1.85 : 1 it is an admittedly distracting effect but it makes for an interesting viewing.

It's tempting to say--as I'm sure several critics did--that "More is Less" when it comes to the "American Graffiti" sequel. Executive producer George Lucas' first failure begins with one early strike: the characters' fates were revealed at the end of the 1973 hit, so we are predisposed to expect a downer. Written and directed by B. W. L. Norton, the film has a novel concept that unfortunately didn't connect with audiences: each character's story takes place on a different New Year's Eve, and then all the episodes are intercut in a timeline. Paul Le Mat is racing cars (and flirting with a pretty Swede); Charles Martin Smith is a soldier in Vietnam plotting his escape; Candy Clark and Mackenzie Phillips have become San Francisco hippies; and Ron Howard and Cindy Williams are battling marrieds with bratty kids (Richard Dreyfuss sat this one out, though Harrison Ford has a sneaky cameo as a cop). Each installment has been filmed in a unique style tailored to the material, with Smith's Vietnam episode the most vividly captured (and the idea of him comically trying to blow off his own arm in order to get back home says more about the war than most antiwar movies do in two hours). The picture's stylistic attributes dazzle for a while before becoming a colorful distraction, with the multi-image cinematography failing to mask the fact that Norton's screenplay is exceptionally thin. He gets some beautiful moments on film, aided by terrific period music on the soundtrack; however, Norton isn't very adept with his actors, most of whom overplay (Howard and Williams are the biggest offenders). There's a hint of melancholy sweetness at the end of Clark's segment (featuring a likably benign Scott Glenn)--also a bit of it in Le Mat's story--but "More" is indeed Less...there's just no way around that. ** from ****

First off, you can not expect a sequel to excel. We get lucky sometimes but usually they are either totally lame or they fall into some sort of formula hellhole. This film, as many many reviewers have pointed out, does have flaws. Most films do. It is not that different in structure from the original either, following different story lines with different characters, albeit in different years rather than in the same night. The Vietnam sequences with Terry the Toad and Little Joe from the Pharohs gang are the best part of the movie. They could almost have made a single full-length sequel following that story line. A lot of reviewers liked the Milner sequences more than the Debbie sequences. I sort of go the other way around. I thought the Milner storyline was weak and there just wasn't much there. Maybe the hippie sequences were more familiar to me, but I related to that and thought most of it was hilarious. They could have dropped the entire other sequence as well ... it just labored to tell their story against a backdrop that was much bigger than they were.

Also liked the cameo by Falfa, Harrison Ford.

Anyway, maybe someone will come back and make the rest of the Terry-the-Toad in Vietnam story. Feel the same way about D-Day "whereabouts unknown" in Animal House. There's a movie there waiting to be told.

I'm guessing a lot of folks that have complained about the split screen in MAG kid of missed yet another bit of cleverness that seemed to fly over the heads of a lot of viewers.

Each section (year) is shot in a different manner to make a secondary visual comment. The Vietnam stuff is all shot on 16mm, hand-held and grainy as hell to simulate the stuff we were watching on the nightly news back then.

Milner's sequences are shot in super widescreen, Debbie's stuff is split screen, sped up, slowed down - your basic "statement" crap from the late 60's and Ron Howard's happy home life is shot with the over-lit, over-tailored feel of a "mainstream" comedy ala Doris Day/Bob Hope circa 1965.

Personally, I found it amusing.