Last night I finally got around to George Lucas' American Graffiti, which various people had been telling me to watch. If I had any nostalgia for the golden days of the sixties and a bunch of horny, self-obsessed teenagers, no doubt I would have enjoyed myself immensely. As it was, it was the '60s evacuated of almost everything that makes the the decade interesting to me, and instead was just white high schoolers riding around for a night. Will I go to college? Should we break up? Where's that hot chick? I love Steven! I hate Steven!
The most enjoyable part was probably marveling at Richard Dreyfuss -- was he ever that young, really? He at least brought a tiny bit of depth to his character. All in all, if you want to watch a movie with roller-skating waitresses bringing food to drive-through diners, there are more interesting films, like Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. There are only the tiniest mentions in this one of things like race relations or Vietnam -- the "where are they now" sentences that end the film tell us that the geeky guy was reported MIA in Vietnam. And incidentally, in a final act of sexism, the "where are they now" only mentions the main four boys. Nothing about the girls. If I hadn't been mildly annoyed by the film already, that would have done it.
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That Ron Howard sure had acting range, didn't he? His character is basically Richie Cunningham with even more male entitlement.
You know the part where Richie Cunningham and Shirley Feenie (I don't remember the names of the AG characters) are in the car making out and Richie's trying to coerce Shirley into sex? "You don't want me to forget about you, do you?" She's been his girlfriend all through high school, but now if she doesn't be a sport and think of England he'll forget she ever existed. And by the by he'd just told her he was planning to dump her at his earliest convenience, which doesn't tend to make a girl feel like having sexy time anyway. I wish Shirley'd kneed him in the bullocks.
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