Alice's Restaurant (1969)

Having been unable to convince the draft that some hereditary health condition should exempt him from army service, Argo Guthrie decides to hitch his way to an old church being re-purposed by “Ray” (James Broderick) and “Alice” (Patricia Quinn) for his last few weeks of freedom. His journey isn’t exactly uneventful, and just about everyone he encounters en route takes him for a long-haired waste of space. When he finally arrives at the commune, a bit bruised, he helps out “Alice” as she puts the finishing touches to her fine dining establishment that sells Boeuf Bourginon, don’t you know. What now ensues is a folk-music enveloped rite of passage for Arlo that he encapsulates in the some quarter of an hour that the title song takes so complete. No, don’t worry - we don’t get the entire song, but it filters through as his escapades and those of his friends see him prosecuted for an early example of fly-tipping; thrown through a plate glass window and on the wrong end of the law on a few occasions - and so we do understand where much of that lyric comes from. Guthrie is an engaging actor here, very much in the young Bobby Dylan vein, and there’s a duet with Pete Seeger for dad Woody (Joseph Boley) that gets the toes tapping. Sadly, though, it has lost much of it’s lustre over time and now comes across as a pretty weakly structured drama that has points to make, but that Guthrie himself hasn’t the gravitas to deliver. At the time, in the USA, it might have resonated with many a youth but now it’s really just an assembly of light-hearted episodes that are enjoyable enough but nothing special as it begins to drag a little too much toward the end. It doesn’t really show off the USA as much of a land of opportunity either and though it has it’s moments, there just weren’t enough of them for me.