This has to be one of the worst I've seen in awhile. The directing, the writing, the acting was all SO BAD. I expected much more from the guy who directed Bonnie and Clyde and Alice's Restaurant. What happened to him in the 80s? He fell asleep at the wheel or else got really really nostalgic for the past.
A lot of this film felt like there were scenes missing. Every character was a prototype rather than a real person. The confused sensitive artist, the good son who does what his parents want, the free spirit. The characters are the same from beginning to end. Nobody changes or grows. Things happen to them but they are the exact same as they always were which is wholly unrealistic. The parents are all monochromatic and might as well be speaking like the parents from Charlie Brown. None of them understand anything and are confrontational with their kids. The generation gap is wider than the Grand Canyon and Penn is not going to let us forget it.
Danilo's father is a hardworking, stoic, silent type who out of nowhere starts beating on him at the kitchen table. He's suddenly a caricature of an immigrant parent who wants to toughen up his kid. Oh and his kid looks to be about 45 years old in the scene even though he's supposed to be a teenager. The father came to America to escape communism in Yugoslavia NOT to make a better life for his family. That's a key point because when his son wants to go to college, his father tells him no because he and his mother work very hard scrubbing floors and the kid should too. What kind of father would escape communism and risk it all to move to America only to hold his kid down and discourage an education? The answer is NO FATHER would do that. None. If all he wanted was hard work at a crappy job, why didn't he stay in the communist bloc? Another adult criticizes those who don't want to fight for their country. Another adult forces his son to work in the family business. Parents just don't understand, right Will Smith? None of these adults have any real emotion and are simply projecting generalizations from the time period.
In another scene, a bunch of teenage kids are dancing on the beach. There are some black kids there who are part of the group. Suddenly, a few of the kids inexplicably start hurling racial slurs at the black and Jewish kids and fighting with them. It's as though the director was holding up a sign saying, "the Civil Rights Movement is coming!!! It was so heavy handed as to be ridiculous. The writer seemed determined to pack in every single event of the 60s regardless if it made sense to the story.
The film is about four baby boomers growing up during the turbulent 60s. They take turns narrating which is fine but out of nowhere, the director has a short narration by the mother of one of the kids. She says something vague about autumn coming early and is never heard from again. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that a story about young people should not incorporate the ramblings of one of their parents. The widening generation gap was also something that came out of the 60s and you would think the director would have recognized that.
The acting is probably the most egregious thing about this picture that made it really awful. All of the four friends and their parents come off as amateur summer stock players at best, attention seeking children at worst. The actor playing Danilo and the one playing Georgia are probably the worst of the bunch. Georgia waves her arms, yells her lines, and screws up her face into exaggerated, silent movie actress expressions. She's extremely physical in everything she does and is embarrassingly asexual despite her best efforts at trying to be a seductress. Her drama teacher in high school must have told her that acting begins with the body because she is constantly widening her eyes, exaggerating the movement of her mouth, and waving her arms in her attempts to seem like a carefree dreamer. At one point, she dramatically sings Hit the Road Jack to a steel executive visiting for Career Day. She's staring him down with this serious look on her face that is so silly that I had to avert my eyes out of sympathy for her.
The actor playing Danilo also shouts his lines and waves his arms. His dialogue is extremely unrealistic as it is for all of the characters. At one point, he's at loose ends about what to do with his life and throws himself on his bed yelling, "I must be insane." Then his roommate starts chanting slang terms for the female anatomy and they both start abusing themselves with girlie magazines. Who does this? I realize it's supposed to be the end of the repression of the early 60s but this was just ridiculous. They behaved as though they were in a monastery. The roommate seemed gay at times which may have been accidental or may not have been. They were at college so why didn't they go out and meet some women or maybe even call an escort service? Also, the actor playing Danilo looked way too old to be a teenage college student. The light kept bouncing off his receding hairline, a reminder that he was probably closer to 50 than 20. His girlfriend looks old enough to be his mother. As he gets older, he "grows" a wispy beard that looks like he pasted it on for Halloween. It's comical how awful and phony this beard looks. The makeup artist should have been fired the minute she put that on his face. It's one of those ironic pointy jobs that artistic cafe dwellers used to wear. See how the times are CHANGING???
Does the director really believe that nobody was having sex at this point in history? Especially in a college in Chicago? That everyone was as innocent as is portrayed here? He lived through this period so how could he make a film that was so unbelievably phony and maudlin? Why couldn't he cast some actors who knew what they were doing? None of the storylines rang true. Though some of the tidbits thrown in could have and probably did happen, most of the story was cloaked in sentimentalism and melodrama. None of the character motivations made much sense because they were nothing more than plot devices to tell the overarching story of the changing times. There was a loss of innocence so the director showed us nothing but naive innocence among four friends. They were all goody goody kids who never did anything wrong until the politics of the time dictated they completely change. There was no nuance whatsoever.
The foreshadowing was done with a hammer so we wouldn't miss it. One of the friends joins the army and as he's shipping out, Danilo says, "it would be just like you to get yourself killed in a war." That's right folks. Vietnam is coming though the characters don't know it but the viewers do, don't we? Since we know very little about this character, I guess we'll have to take Danilo's word for it that his crazy friend would do something silly like go die in a war. What does that even MEAN? As the friend is leaving he says dramatically, "maybe I'll never see you again," as he stares off into the distance. Then just so we don't think it's too much, he says, "but maybe I will!" Who on earth approved this script?
Remember Georgia the carefree girl who danced around and had sex before anyone else? She's going to be a HIPPY!! Just for good measure let's put her in a red wedding dress and get her pregnant out of wedlock. She's so carefree that during natural childbirth, she's laughing and mugging for her friend who is taking video of the blessed event. She's such a happy girl that squeezing a baby out of her womb isn't even painful to her. GIMME A BREAK ALREADY!
Everyone dies at once in this film. This is somewhat clever in that the director was probably trying to mirror the reality of the 60s with all the assassinations. He takes it too far again when he has a character dress like Jackie Kennedy, complete with sunglasses inside the house. There's a love story tacked on for good measure that nobody cares about and then the movie thankfully ends.
I love this time period, especially the music and the culture. This is perhaps why this film made me so angry. It could have been done so much better if the director had allowed some realism into his characters.
A lot of this film felt like there were scenes missing. Every character was a prototype rather than a real person. The confused sensitive artist, the good son who does what his parents want, the free spirit. The characters are the same from beginning to end. Nobody changes or grows. Things happen to them but they are the exact same as they always were which is wholly unrealistic. The parents are all monochromatic and might as well be speaking like the parents from Charlie Brown. None of them understand anything and are confrontational with their kids. The generation gap is wider than the Grand Canyon and Penn is not going to let us forget it.
Danilo's father is a hardworking, stoic, silent type who out of nowhere starts beating on him at the kitchen table. He's suddenly a caricature of an immigrant parent who wants to toughen up his kid. Oh and his kid looks to be about 45 years old in the scene even though he's supposed to be a teenager. The father came to America to escape communism in Yugoslavia NOT to make a better life for his family. That's a key point because when his son wants to go to college, his father tells him no because he and his mother work very hard scrubbing floors and the kid should too. What kind of father would escape communism and risk it all to move to America only to hold his kid down and discourage an education? The answer is NO FATHER would do that. None. If all he wanted was hard work at a crappy job, why didn't he stay in the communist bloc? Another adult criticizes those who don't want to fight for their country. Another adult forces his son to work in the family business. Parents just don't understand, right Will Smith? None of these adults have any real emotion and are simply projecting generalizations from the time period.
In another scene, a bunch of teenage kids are dancing on the beach. There are some black kids there who are part of the group. Suddenly, a few of the kids inexplicably start hurling racial slurs at the black and Jewish kids and fighting with them. It's as though the director was holding up a sign saying, "the Civil Rights Movement is coming!!! It was so heavy handed as to be ridiculous. The writer seemed determined to pack in every single event of the 60s regardless if it made sense to the story.
The film is about four baby boomers growing up during the turbulent 60s. They take turns narrating which is fine but out of nowhere, the director has a short narration by the mother of one of the kids. She says something vague about autumn coming early and is never heard from again. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that a story about young people should not incorporate the ramblings of one of their parents. The widening generation gap was also something that came out of the 60s and you would think the director would have recognized that.
The acting is probably the most egregious thing about this picture that made it really awful. All of the four friends and their parents come off as amateur summer stock players at best, attention seeking children at worst. The actor playing Danilo and the one playing Georgia are probably the worst of the bunch. Georgia waves her arms, yells her lines, and screws up her face into exaggerated, silent movie actress expressions. She's extremely physical in everything she does and is embarrassingly asexual despite her best efforts at trying to be a seductress. Her drama teacher in high school must have told her that acting begins with the body because she is constantly widening her eyes, exaggerating the movement of her mouth, and waving her arms in her attempts to seem like a carefree dreamer. At one point, she dramatically sings Hit the Road Jack to a steel executive visiting for Career Day. She's staring him down with this serious look on her face that is so silly that I had to avert my eyes out of sympathy for her.
The actor playing Danilo also shouts his lines and waves his arms. His dialogue is extremely unrealistic as it is for all of the characters. At one point, he's at loose ends about what to do with his life and throws himself on his bed yelling, "I must be insane." Then his roommate starts chanting slang terms for the female anatomy and they both start abusing themselves with girlie magazines. Who does this? I realize it's supposed to be the end of the repression of the early 60s but this was just ridiculous. They behaved as though they were in a monastery. The roommate seemed gay at times which may have been accidental or may not have been. They were at college so why didn't they go out and meet some women or maybe even call an escort service? Also, the actor playing Danilo looked way too old to be a teenage college student. The light kept bouncing off his receding hairline, a reminder that he was probably closer to 50 than 20. His girlfriend looks old enough to be his mother. As he gets older, he "grows" a wispy beard that looks like he pasted it on for Halloween. It's comical how awful and phony this beard looks. The makeup artist should have been fired the minute she put that on his face. It's one of those ironic pointy jobs that artistic cafe dwellers used to wear. See how the times are CHANGING???
Does the director really believe that nobody was having sex at this point in history? Especially in a college in Chicago? That everyone was as innocent as is portrayed here? He lived through this period so how could he make a film that was so unbelievably phony and maudlin? Why couldn't he cast some actors who knew what they were doing? None of the storylines rang true. Though some of the tidbits thrown in could have and probably did happen, most of the story was cloaked in sentimentalism and melodrama. None of the character motivations made much sense because they were nothing more than plot devices to tell the overarching story of the changing times. There was a loss of innocence so the director showed us nothing but naive innocence among four friends. They were all goody goody kids who never did anything wrong until the politics of the time dictated they completely change. There was no nuance whatsoever.
The foreshadowing was done with a hammer so we wouldn't miss it. One of the friends joins the army and as he's shipping out, Danilo says, "it would be just like you to get yourself killed in a war." That's right folks. Vietnam is coming though the characters don't know it but the viewers do, don't we? Since we know very little about this character, I guess we'll have to take Danilo's word for it that his crazy friend would do something silly like go die in a war. What does that even MEAN? As the friend is leaving he says dramatically, "maybe I'll never see you again," as he stares off into the distance. Then just so we don't think it's too much, he says, "but maybe I will!" Who on earth approved this script?
Remember Georgia the carefree girl who danced around and had sex before anyone else? She's going to be a HIPPY!! Just for good measure let's put her in a red wedding dress and get her pregnant out of wedlock. She's so carefree that during natural childbirth, she's laughing and mugging for her friend who is taking video of the blessed event. She's such a happy girl that squeezing a baby out of her womb isn't even painful to her. GIMME A BREAK ALREADY!
Everyone dies at once in this film. This is somewhat clever in that the director was probably trying to mirror the reality of the 60s with all the assassinations. He takes it too far again when he has a character dress like Jackie Kennedy, complete with sunglasses inside the house. There's a love story tacked on for good measure that nobody cares about and then the movie thankfully ends.
I love this time period, especially the music and the culture. This is perhaps why this film made me so angry. It could have been done so much better if the director had allowed some realism into his characters.