The graduate review

Rating: Null/10 (14 December 2009)

The graduate was definitaly a favorite movie of mine. its funny but yet romantic style keeps the audience in line as to what is going to happen next. This is probably one of Dustin Hoffmans greatest early work and rise to success. it is one of the key, ground-breaking films of the late 1960s, and helped to set in motion a new era of film-making. The film is a biting satire comedy about a recent nebbish, East Coast college graduate who finds himself alienated and adrift in the shifting, social and sexual mores of the 1960s, and questioning the values of society (with its keyword "plastics"). This comedy is wonderfully crafted by director Nichols who presents a half-dozen hilarious scenes, including Hoffman escaping badgering advice by submerging himself in the family pool in scuba gear and Bancroft's sudden shift from respectable matron to predatory tease, hiking her skirts lasciviously and purring promises of smoldering sex which almost put Hoffman into a comatose state. Nichols was to declare: "I think Benjamin and Elaine will end up exactly like their parents; that's what I was trying to say in the last scene." Yet the well-to-do younger audiences of the day interpreted this sequence of blatant heroics as a wonderful act of defiance by two young people whose destinies were being manipulated by their parents.