:Recycled "Hair"

Rating: 1/10 (16 September 2007)

This one is also out in some parts of the country today, rest of the country by the end of the month. Been there, seen this. It's called "Hair." As if we need yet another anti-war movie, like "Hair" this is a musical using Beatles songs. It takes place during the Vietnam war, and the message is that America's wars are bad, America sends its boys to die and get maimed, and we need spoiled, rich left-wing activists to show us the way. Hmmm . . . sound familiar. It's called Hollywood.
Marilyn Manson's girlfriend, Evan Rachel Wood plays Lucy, a young girl from a rich family who loses her boyfriend, killed serving in Vietnam. She drops out of school, moves to New York, and becomes an anti-war activist. She also falls for an illegal alien from Britain, Jude. He's the illegitimate son of an American World War II vet who is now a janitor at Princeton. We follow Jude, Lucy (surprise!--the convenient namesakes of Beatles songs), and her brother, who drops out of Princeton and tries to dodge the Vietnam draft--all through a musical journey, which celebrates the '60s counterculture. Because we all know the '60s brought us such great stuff like AIDS, rampant polygamous relationships, drugs, and failed everything. Also features two characters apparently modeled on Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, and equally as brain-addled.
Aside from the plot, equally annoying is the cameo by Bono, who really belonged in that decade and out of ours.
Although the singing and sets in this movie are well done (and I'm no musical devotee), the anti-war message grows tinny and tired. What was a 2.25-hour movie seemed like more than four hours.

Debbie Schlussel