Quite Dated

Rating: 3/10 (30 March 2018)

The one reason that I ended up watching this film is because it was one of those films that always seems to come back again and again. Well, not quite because these days it is pretty dated. In fact I didn't realise that it was as old as it was, and here we see a really, really young Dustin Hoffman playing the role that basically made him a star. The problem was that I really didn't think all that much of this film. Okay, while I didn't hate it, I simply cannot give it a higher rating than I have.
The film is about a young man, Ben, who returns from college to Los Angeles with top marks, and of course all of his family friends are so proud of him. Within a short time he discovers that one of his parent's friends is trying to seduce him, and after some hesitation, he decides to get involved. The catch comes about when her daughter also returns and his parents convince him to take her out on a date, much to the horror of her mother. Anyway, after him pursuing her to no end, they finally elope and the film ends. I can sort of see where the comedy in this film lies, however a part of me finds that what is happening is so unrealistic, at least looking at it from this day and age. For instance, he tries do make the first date as bad as possible, only to change his mind, and suddenly it is all okay. As for him constantly pursing her, there is something call harassment.
This film is certainly dated when it comes to the content, though a part of me felt that half way through the creators pretty much reached a mental block, and simply did not know how to proceed. Sure, Ben is clearly a smart guy, and at the beginning of the film quite naive, but by the end his behaviour really doesn't seem to make his character all that flattering, and why they didn't end up calling the police when he crashed the wedding, and why Elaine even ran off with him is beyond me.
In a way this film is one of those coming of age films, but it is also set at that time when many of us are really unsure where we are going in our life. For most of our lives we are guided, though we do make the occasional choices, such as what to study, however once we have finished university all of a sudden the world has opened up and many of us can be lost. Yet this is also about entering the world of the adult, the world where the innocence of our youths is suddenly destroyed upon the realisation that the people that we grew up with have a much darker side. Mind you, we are looking at the wealthier upper classes, but still, many of us in the middle class go through this angst as well.
Still, I didn't find this film all that funny. Well, I could see where it was funny, particularly the scene where he is wandering through the hotel with his date to discover that everybody knows who he is, except they believe that he is somebody different. Then there is his naivety with regards to the affair, and that curiosity which suddenly turns him into a man in the know. He certainly does change, but as I mentioned, the film pretty much degenerates as we get near the end.