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Hair

Hair

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The age of Aquarius
Review: The Age of Aquarius

The motion picture version of Hair is different from the more common theatrical version, which is still preformed today. This said, I feel that what it looses in being on a screen it makes up for in the benefit of real backdrops from rural farms to New York City. On screen musicals are unfamiliar to the younger audiences such as myself, but the songs are quite funny and the music is excellent. It is easy to enjoy the movie, including the songs if one accepts the parody involved. The movie is not all singing and dancing, there are numerous very serious moments, the most of which being the ending.
I thoroughly enjoyed the film. It was fun to picture my parents listening to those songs, dressed up like freaks. I felt that the movie dealt with the youth movement of the 60's well. The feelings and morals of the youth were expressed quite accurately, even if the events of the plot were less than realistic. I would recommend anyone who is curious about what the 60's were like, or anyone down for a good laugh to go see Hair.
One aspect of the movie I particularly liked was their opposition to the Vietnam War, and how they try to keep Claude from going to join the army. When Claude said "I'm going to fight for you" and is told "If that's why your doing it then don't because if it was the other way around I wouldn't do it for you" you really understand why they didn't want to see their friends go halfway around the world to die.
Although no one of the characters was exactly like me, I did feel that I related to George Burger the most. He acted ridiculous, but he knew that he was ridiculous. And he was always straight forward, when he wanted something, like the rich kid's car, he takes it. ...
I believe the films main message about youth culture was that of the youth movement of the 60's. They are anti-materialistic, in the beginning they beg for change, and then use it to rent a horse for an hour instead of buying food. [they] ...are defiant of authority; they sneak into a fancy party and then get arrested instead of leaving when told. And they are opposed to the war in Vietnam, the curly haired girl offers to marry Claude because she is pregnant and he wouldn't have to go.
As a whole, if you ignore the songs, the film captured the realities of teenage life in the 60's quite well. Unfortunately for me, the 60's were 40 years ago and life is not as it was in the days of Hair. Nonetheless this movie's depiction of teenage life and youth culture remains relevant, especially as our government now is heading in a similar direction as it did then. If the US goes to war with Iraq, we will be fighting two different wars with ground troops in two different foreign countries. If they last for a long time as they may, it is possible a draft would be instituted, at which point we would see just how relevant the youth movement is. There would be protest and widespread distrust of authority figures just as there was in the 60's. Let's all just hope that today's youth, generation Y or whatever you want to call them, doesn't have to follow in this aspect of their parents footsteps.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: WHAT A MUSICAL.
Review: This is how the musical should be. It is well acted, very musical, well filmed, and full of good thoughts. And the music is so memorable.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of the best musical adaptations ever!
Review: This is certainly one of the best musical adaptations I have ever seen on the big screen. The writers took nearly all of the best songs from the show and added a completely new script for the movie (the plot in the stage version was rather non-existent).
All of the actors are just amazing & very good singers, too, especially Treat Williams & Beverly D'Angelo. The ending is emotionally very intense & it delivers a powerful statement against war, which is of timeless importance.
(Yes, there is some full frontal female nudity in the movie, but no sexual intercourse whatsoever is shown, so I can't really see why this should make the movie unsuitable for little children, as some other reviewers here suggested.)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: May the New Age Be Ever Dawning
Review: Peace. Love. Freedom. Happiness. Oh, the cynics and weltschmertz-besmudged who dislike this flower inspired by the flower-power era!
I like this film more than the original musical. I enjoy the film each and every time I watch it. I enjoy the cinematography. I adore the acting. The dancing is transcendent. The irony and tongue-in-cheek critique of the Sixties, as well as the capturing of the spirit of that peculiar American era, are lovely.
I was nine when Diane Keaton was performing "Black Boys" on Broadway, and I wasn't part of the hippy scene. I'm glad: the excesses of the era led to great tragedy. (Read Philip K. Dick's novel A SCANNER DARKLY for one brilliant analysis of this.)
But the joy and the hope of that Romantic era never have fully been rekindled. Though Tricky Dicky was slushfunding; though Mi Lai, Kent State, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr., made horrible backdrops for my own despoiled childhood innocence--there was Hope: The Bad Guys might not win; Love and Understanding might predominate; perhaps we all might be able to live as brothers and sisters. Perhaps prejudice, hatred, war, greed, shame, terror, will die; perhaps kindness, togetherness, peace, honesty, and joy will reign.
Yes, the Bad Guys ALWAYS win. Yes, this vision of a Better World is sophomoric. Yes, Christ always will be crucified; Buddha will be worshipped; the Temple will be destroyed, and the rivers all will run with blood.
But my heart still sings along with the song, "Good morning, starshine! The earth says Hello! You twinkle above us--we twinkle below."
Eternity is just long enough for a joke says Hesse--and what better jokes than the Sixties themselves and this lovely film which captures its spirit and energy.
May the swords be beaten into ploughshares; may the sun shine in; may Jupiter align with Mars. Forever.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Bad script, bad music, bad dancing, and a bad idea.
Review: Hair has to be one of the oddest musicals ever made. On the surface, it declares its 60s radical liberal consciousness, and yet at the heart, this is an old-fashioned smaltzy poor-boy-meets-poor-little-rich-girl story. It's not dissimilar to Love Story. On top of that, this musical claims to be about something, namely: the Vietnam War. In a funny way, this film also remindes me of Casablanca, because both films try to resolve moral dilemmas through the actions of the main characters. Whereas Casablanca achieved this beautifully, indeed, movingly, this film botches it. The love interest is too slight and corny to be of interest and the political issues never rise above vague sloganeering. To compare and contrast this film with Casablanca may seem deeply flattering to Hair, and it is, but the moral dilemmas are similar, and the director of Hair, Milos Forman, is a more highly-rated film-maker than Michael Curtiz, the director of Casablanca. (It is incredible that Forman made Hair between One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus.)

As this is a musical, perhaps we shouldn't take it too seriously, (although I suspect Kurt Weill and Bertholt Brecht would have taken issue with that.) So lets look at the musical aspect of this film. Aquarius and Good Morning Starshine have a cheesy appeal, but the rest of the songs are tone death rubbish that has dated badly. Things do not improve with the choreography which has so little artistry that the dancing looks like it is being improvised before the camera. I vainly hoped that Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron would bounce onto the set and give the dancing some desperately needed style and elegance. I suppose the one good thing about this musical is that it makes you appreciate Lloyd Webber a bit more, and that is hardly meant as a recommendation.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Disappointed but I watched the whole thing.
Review: Since I grew up in the 60's I remember the time very well and this film glorifies some things that I remember as being heard of but questionable. The film is rated PG and I disagree with that, there is full frontal female nudity and other scenes with nudity. It makes drug abuse (LSD) and the loose lifestyle look apealing and there is a reason that the hippie/drug culture died out. The life style killed many and the rest grew up and realized that their protest were being ignored because of their zany behavior. The African American people depicted in the film are somewhat realistic but there are a couple songs that are offensive in language. I watched/ bought the film because I remembered some of the songs and wanted to see what the story was. It ends sadly and unrealistically like the rest of the film. Not worth the time unless you are really bored.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A "MUST HAVE" MOVIE
Review: This movie is a classic. The best musical ever, by far. I normally don't like musicals too much, but this may be my favorite movie ever. I've only watched it 14 times though, maybe another 10 times will set it in stone. This is a GREAT movie. Can I give it "10 stars"????

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: hair
Review: this is one of the best musicals I have ever seen. it talks about a WW2 drafting and the burning of draft cards and long hair, hence the name. I really like this movie and you will too if you like fun and interesting ideas in what life was really like during WW2. Full of LSD, sexual jokes, HAIR!!!lol

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: No effort DVD production
Review: So far this is the worse DVD I have ever owned. I do love the movie production of Hair and if I was writing my review based on the music or original film I would rate it higher. However I am basing my review on the specifics of this DVD production. First of all the sound is distorted. I have a very high end DVD player and digital amp and have yet to experience such distortion. This is unacceptable especially for a musical. Second the subtitles do not even match the dialogue. Third the graphics used for the menu screen are a complete joke. Instead of taking stills from the movie they hired some dancers dressed in hippy garb for a silhouetted MTV commercial type clip, does not jive at all with the movie. Forth the extras are [terrible]. No audio commentary, no documentary, nothing. Fith the widesreen is hardly wide screen at all. Not sure why they even offered it. So basically whoever wrote the above reviews works for MGM and I would bet my house that they will come out with yet another "special edition" in the near future. So as I said this is a no effort DVD production, complete joke.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Not better late than never.
Review: Hair was a classic case of something coming along too late.

If the movie had been releasaed in the late sixties or early seventies, it would have been supersuccessful.

Regretfully, by the time it was released, 1979, everything it was about (the Vietnam War, the peace movement, even long hair) had become yesterday's news.

As a result, it floundered.


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