Alice's Restaurant

Based on Arlo Guthrie's engaging 18-minute song about his Earth Mother friend, Alice, and her restaurant and co-scripted by director Penn with Venable Herndon, Alice's Restaurant has, not  surprisingly, little in the way of story, but worse, dreadful dialogue, lousy amateur acting, awful wardrobe (Arlo sports some of the worst shirts you'll ever see outside The Brady Bunch) and even its day, when the freewheelin' antics of Arlo (playing himself) may have had more appeal, probably would have still needed a big bag of weed to raise more than a flicker of interest.

Today, with its endless round of "hey man" huggin' and ain't we cool self-consciousness, this is likely to cure anyone of their nostalgia for the Flower Power years or, if not nostalgia, fascination for the same. Given that this came for Penn between Bonnie And Clyde (1969) and Little Big Man (1970) it's hard to believe that this is no more than than the Zeitgeist equivalent of an Elvis movie.

The film was made in Stockbridge, Massachusetts where Arlo's song was set, using the townsfolk as extras (including the real Ray and Alice) and the church where the Thanksgiving dinner and subsequent events took place whilst Officer Obie plays himself. Not that any of this makes it an any less awful a film.

 

Want something different?