Rating: 
Summary: You had to be there...
Review: It was '68: I was 18: this movie was stunning and bright. It's 2001: I'm 49: this movie is embarrassingly naive. Some things are best left in the imagination I think. I would have been happier with my memories of the times and the thrill this movie brought than the reality of how laughable it is. God, it makes you feel old...
Rating: 
Summary: Hilarious
Review: Many have written poorly about Candy. Perhaps, they took the movie too seriously because there are many moments that are genuinely amusing: the soldiers doing a dance number and eliciting a tear from their commander, Candy's uncle unplugging his brother as he recuperates in the hospital, the concept of a "Post-Operative Bash", McPhisto's made up stories, and the entire Brando scene.
What I think is the main reason for people disliking this movie is that it wasn't what they expected it to be. It's trippy and a little weird at times. The music is also amazing. If you don't like Steppenwolf or the Byrds, perhaps you shouldn't bother.
The Bottom line: this movie is a riot if you have the right mindset watching it.
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious
Review: Many have written poorly about Candy. Perhaps, they took the movie too seriously because there are many moments that are genuinely amusing: the soldiers doing a dance number and eliciting a tear from their commander, Candy's uncle unplugging his brother as he recuperates in the hospital, the concept of a "Post-Operative Bash", McPhisto's made up stories, and the entire Brando scene.
What I think is the main reason for people disliking this movie is that it wasn't what they expected it to be. It's trippy and a little weird at times. The music is also amazing. If you don't like Steppenwolf or the Byrds, perhaps you shouldn't bother.
The Bottom line: this movie is a riot if you have the right mindset watching it.
Rating: 
Summary: So many big names, such a terrible movie
Review: Speaking as someone who was a mere twinkle in his father's eye in the 60s, I have no fond memories which this movie rekindles. I presume it is supposed to be campy fun, but it's a pretty terrible movie from start to finish. Big names, bad script, bad acting, bad music. This movie has everything.
Rating:
Summary: "...Everybody wants a taste."
Review: This 60s mockery, certainly among the most-wanted of DVD titles, is finally available in a crisp, widescreen print from Anchor Bay Entertainment. It's a feminine -- but definitely not feminist -- take on Voltaire's "Candide" as imagined through the dirty-old-man mode of screenwriter Buck Henry, and based on Terry Southern's once scandalous novel of the same name.Fate sends naive, voluptuous, high-schooler Candy Christian (Ewa Aulin) on a journey of sexual discovery. Along the way, she encounters a surprising array of big name stars (Richard Burton, Walter Matthau, Marlon Brando, James Coburn, John Huston, Charles Aznavour among others), all of whom want to sample delicious, innocent Candy. This uneven burlesque is sometimes sweet, shocking, embarrassing, hysterical and yes, worth a look. From the perspective of the 21st century, it's a living time capsule that mirrors elements of the distant sexual revolution and is a glossy attempt at what low budget video porn would later exploited in far more explicit, tedious, mind-numbing detail. Christian Marquand directs. Music by Steppenwolf and The Byrds. Whatever happened to the luscious Ewa Aulin? (Anchor Bay, Color, Widescreen, Dolby Mono, 124 minutes, rated R, 1969)
Rating:
Summary: Unbelievably Bad!
Review: This has got to be the worst movie of it's type (big budget, big stars) I have ever seen. A complete [distruction] of Terry Southern's hilarious 60's novel, it captures not one of the laughs, not one of his comical characters and none of his satirical wit. The movie was deservedly savaged by critics and avoided by moviegoers. The best excuse I can find for it is that it was made during a time of many studio restrictions. and could be a truly funny independent film today.
Rating:
Summary: Unbelievably Bad!
Review: This has got to be the worst movie of it's type (big budget, big stars) I have ever seen. A complete [distruction] of Terry Southern's hilarious 60's novel, it captures not one of the laughs, not one of his comical characters and none of his satirical wit. The movie was deservedly savaged by critics and avoided by moviegoers. The best excuse I can find for it is that it was made during a time of many studio restrictions. and could be a truly funny independent film today.
Rating: 
Summary: The biggest embarrasment in film history!!!!
Review: This monstrosity has some of the greatest actors to ever grace a screen amongst its hallowed cast, Ringo Starr, John Astin (twice!!!!) and Marlon Brando as a tantric guru in a mobile caravan temple!!!!! Ewa Aulin in the title role, tears up the screen with her wide eyed sexual innocence, but it is her co-stars that carry the film as each molests her in increasingly more absurd situations. Dicky Burton opens proceedings as a pretentious University lecturer, with an ever present wind machine blowing at his scarf and hair(even indoors!!!!!), he very soon ends up lying face down in a puddle of whiskey - the biggest stretch any actor has ever made on film!!!!!!!!!! Ringo Starr plays a hunchbacked mexican gardener, John Astin plays Candy's Father AND Uncle, Walter Matthau plays a gung-ho army commander(!!!!!), the list of famous faces in this abomination is endless!!!!! The fact that the plot makes absolutely no sence, is of little consequence to director Christian Marquand, who relishes the fact that he has a big name cast doing the most unbelievably OTT things, delivering inane/insane dialogue, and generally being as "out there" as possible. At all costs, get a copy of this film... if only to have a look at some of the greatest actors of all time making total and utter fools of themselves (well, you would exactly watch it for the plot, would you???!!!). One of the greatest "head" films ever made!
Rating:
Summary: Candy everyone wants & abuses. Kudos to Ewa Aulin & Candy!
Review: This movie was made in the year I was born, so it's gotta be good right? Right. I must admit I was curious, not only because it starred Ewa Aulin, whom I'd first seen in Joe D'Amato's Death Smiles On A Murderer, but it co-starred John Astin, Marlon Brando, Richard Burton, James Coburn, Walter Matthau, and Charles Aznavour! What a lineup! It turns out that those five all play exaggerated cariacatures of their roles, the uncle (Astin), a mystic who travels across the country in the back of a diesel truck (Brando), a drunken poet who struts like a rock star and whose hair blows constantly as if having a personal wind machine around him (Burton), a surgeon whose operating theatre is like an actual theatre, complete with audience looking down at his performance (Coburn), a general who has been airborne without the company of women for way too long, and a hunchback (Aznavour), all of them trying to score with Candy. The opening scene is a true stunner--the appearance of a ball of heavenly light in outer space, the scene shifting to various galaxies, with the heavenly light coming to the familiar blue-green planet of Earth. The camera then pans along a desert, a stretch of cracked earth, and then the ball of light materializes into a covered white sheet. The sheet unfurls to reveal our beautiful heroine--Candy Christian, who gazes at the camera with a dazed but sensual look. She gives us the briefest glimmer of a smile, nothing more. While the next scene revealed that she was in her father's class daydreaming and that she was an Earth girl, I kind of wonder if she was an extraterrestrial, and that scene told of her arrival to Earth. The Byrds' "Child Of The Universe" playing over the closing credits also lend credence to that theory. The 60's rock guitar score provides a bit of nostalgia, of a style of music and movies that bely a period long gone. And Candy predates Star Wars by nine years in having only the opening titles without launching into the credits. Standout scenes--In the hunchback's hideout, the hunchback's friends douse them with pillow feathers (ground shot looking up) while they are making love on a piano (ground shot), whose strings ring with a discordant sound provide a psychedelic moment. And the various of bogus mystic Grindle (Brando), as he and Candy bend themselves into awkward sexual yoga positions, with the sheets squirming amoeba-like inbetween each position change. His parable of the pig and the flower seems a cynical denunciation of the classic princess and frog fairy story. Candy is the most decent of all the characters in that movie. If she isn't being accosted by all these males trying to get into her pants--including her own uncle (!!), she is arrested by a pair of Mutt and Jeff cops, verbally abused by other females (e.g. the doctor's mother, disguised as a cleaning lady, or the doctor's chief nurse and chief piece of skirt, who is jealous of her). The sick twist ending in the book is diluted somewhat in the movie, but it's there nevertheless. Then there's the final scene of her walking among the people who took or tried to take advantage of her in the scene not unlike a convention held by the Society of Creative Anachronisms, with her pure white virginal robe gaining a flower print and her head gaining a crown of flowers. Were the flowers a symbol not of love but of the stains of "human beings" that soiled her, or did the flowers stand for the universal love she believed in? And with the starfield scene reappearing at the closing credits, did Candy turn back into that ball of light and set out across the universe for somewhere more civilized than this sick planet Earth, where she was besmirched over and over? Finally, I'm sick and tired of reading all these negative things about Ewa Aulin. Okay, so she looks like rape-bait with that innocent look and short skirt, speaks like she was drinking Nyquil like it was Coca Cola, and eyes that alternate between being drooped as a result of said Nyquil and that deer-caught-in-the-headlights look. The point is, she succeeds as that well-meaning idealist or alien who truly believed in that idea of giving freely of oneself. After one look at that dazed sensual gaze, all I want to do is just hold her in my arms and tell her I love her for what she is.
Rating:
Summary: dated, but still lots of fun
Review: This satire, based on Terry Southern's novel of the same name, does not have the book's bite and is dated, but it is still loads of fun, with a tremendous cast and crew. As a matter of fact, probably the only principal you will not know is the star -- Swedish teen model Ewa Aulin, who is absolutely stunning (in a blonde naive pouty way) in her acting debut. Everyone else is quite recognizable -- Richard Burton as the narcissistic poet with a giant need, Ringo Starr as a Mexican gardener with political issues, James Courn as an ego-driven surgeon, John Astin as the lecherous uncle, Walter Matthau as a megalomaniacal general, Charles Aznavour as a physically handicapped criminal and Marlon Brando as a guru travelling in the back of a semi. (If it sounds bizarre, that's because it is!) The crew is nothing to sneeze at, either, wih Doug Trumbull (Blade Runner) on special effects, Fellini cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno behind the camera, Buck Henry writing the script, and Dave Grusin (with the help of The Byrds and Steppenwolf) writing the music. Unfortunately the weak link is director Christian Marquand, who rarely seems in control of his actors or the action. I'm puzzled about the film's advertising, which asks "Is Candy faithful? Only to the book!" because it seems inappropriate to ask if Candy is faithful to anyone here. Rather, she is continually and persistently accosted by older men who abuse her trusting and giving nature in order to use her body. How can she be faithful to lechers who want one-night stands? It seems that the marketing guys are using poor Candy too! The film is definitely flawed but marvelously entertaining in a time-warp-ish way. Aulin is just beautiful, and it's great fun to watch Burton and Brando and all the rest ham it up. If Marquand had had a better grip on things, this could have been a classic. As it is, it's a curiosity that will probably entice you to read the book and look for other Aulin films! The dvd has decent extras including: a trailer, radio spots, stills and interesting cast & crew bios.
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