American 70's - Ces années-là

If you're in the right age bracket to remember the '70s fondly, you'll enjoy the music that permeates this cinematic travesty. Apart from that, you'll probably find yourself watching this 4-hour hodgepodge of cliches with your mouth hanging open in horror. It's astonishingly bad.

I certainly hope no one took this movie as history. Music and events were chronologically incorrect throughout the entire 4 hours. It seems that the picture was made entirely to sell advertising time to record companies to advertise their re-released music of the 70s as if you couldn't hear every one of these songs on any given "Classic Rock" station in any given city at any given time. Events and moods were captured well but not chronologically correct - for example: How could 'Whatever Gets you Though the Night' be playing during the 1972 Presidential campaign when the song wasn't released until 1974? How did they get a clip of Jack Benny on the Tonight Show they were watching at Christmas 1975 when Benny died in December of 1974? Why was there a streaker at the 1972 Presidential election party when the streaking fad took place in winter/spring 1974? It seems today, as far as TV writers are concerned, the 1970s were just one year and everything happened during it! I was there for the 1970s and I can assure you that 1971 was very different from 1978 but you'd never know it based on this pseudo-restrospective. Obviously the makers of this film were not as concerned about historical accuracy, as they were with portraying every event they could remember that occurred in the 1970s. It didn't matter when or where in the 1970s, just fit it in where you can, the order doesn't matter. If history were taught this way, we'd never know the truth about anything.

I am not in the habit of nasty reviews. I understand that it is very easy for me to sit in the back row and criticize than it is to do any of this. I usually try to find that one gem or aspect that, I can praise. Sometimes there is an actor or a scene, or character or even a song who will rise above mediocrity and show me something. Unfortunately, I cannot find any gold nugget in this one.

Okay, first of all, the 70's are a tough decade to categorize. Many different things were happening in different places. To do an epic on the 60's or 40's or many other time periods is far easier. Suffice it to say this was an extremely ambitious and arduous task to say the least. Whether it could be done in a 4 hour period would a huge labor.

Having said all of the preceding, this mini series failed on almost every level. The plot was pretty lame. The writing was so bad that, it was down right funny. The characters were so shallow and one dimensional that I was laughing and groaning at times.

We could say that the acting was bad but, it would have taken an amazing cast of the best actors in the world to make this dog hunt. This cast just did not have the chops to pull this one out. Even so, the acting was absolutely, plastic and depth-less.

The only recommendation, I would make is for people with film ambitions, acting, writing or directing to watch this and take careful notes so that you know what not to do. This could be worth it just so you could avoid these mistakes.

For anyone else, I would not waste your time.

Compared to The 60's (1999), The 70's was a piece of television genius. Although there were some historical innacuracies, I was impressed overall at the way that the film makers were able to portray the heartache and disbelif felt within the USA and around the world during the decade that shaped the way the world looked at itself.

I am, however, concerned about the fact that the next mini-series to be produced, in order, will be The 80's :)

This Mini-Series would have been a lot better without the entire production being a shameful promo for the soundtrack. Many times I could not even hear the dialog or many of the news clips from the 70s because of these shameful plugs. It was so obvious. The shame of it all, is that if you can get by this ruthless music promotion; The film was pretty good. Basically you had 4 people,of a clique, that protested the Vietnam war at Kent University. National Guard, tragedy and the film flows from there. Basically the film explores the different roads the 4 main characters take on life's journey. Exploring their individual political ideologies,hopes, dreams , tragedies and just life in general. In this clique we had upper middle class brother and sister, lovelorn female friend and young prideful black male. The stories meshed interwoven with actual trials and tribulations of the decades news. The premise was wonderful , the acting so so and nonstop loud music drowning out the substance of the film was annoying. Even though the film was barely average,it is still watchable. Just do not expect Shakespare.