Determine the sentiment:

This film actually starts out pretty interesting but for my taste it degenerated far too quickly into a dull and predictable melodrama. None of the performances are particularly interesting and the camera work is just standard TV movie stuff, so there's really no reason for anyone to see this movie unless they are as big of a Jeff Bridges fan as I am I guess.

Bridges plays Mike Olson, a young man who announces at a family picnic that he is quitting college to go on the road. His parents believe he is "just acting out" and talk about how "he has no plan". He assures them he does have a plan, and that he needs to discover his true self and his place in the world. So much so in fact that he invites them to go on the road with him and purchases an antique bus to travel in, which he and his father repair in true TV movie father-son bonding fashion. Up until about this point in the film I was somewhat interested in the plot and characters and I wanted to see how his stuck-up mother (Vera Miles) was going to react to life on the road. There's a funny scene early on where the father and son have to convince her to take the trip with them. They show her the inside of the bus and she gradually becomes more and more interested, finally departing in a huff with some kind of talk about curtains versus blinds on the windows. Bridges marvels to his dad (Carl Betz, equipped with radio announcer voice) that she has changed her mind. Dad assures him "electric oven... works every time!".

But the movie goes downhill almost as soon as they hit the road. It turns out that Mike's only "plan" is to introduce them to some "friends" of his who turn out to be random people who they meet at a hippie rock festival. As soon as I saw the rock festival I was a bit disappointed... particularly as it became obvious that the entire rest of the film would take place at the festival campground and not actually on the road. But at least I thought there might be a decent band like, well, if they couldn't afford Hendrix or the Stones maybe they would at least have Canned Heat or Little Feat or something like that. No dice -- apparently the only music at this festival is some horrible choral group with orchestra that sounded like a poor imitation of the Fifth Dimension, coupled with an annoying announcer who's supposed to be humorous.

Also we are introduced to a set of hippy festivalgoers and their various medical melodramas. Kathy (Renne Jarrett) is a pretty blonde girl with existentialism and nature on her mind, who falls in love with Mike before revealing the fact that she needs kidney dialysis to live and has run off to the festival to die. And 2 other campers are determined to have a baby in their crude tent, introducing the struggle between modern medicine and hippy ignorance (or something like that). All in all the longer this goes on the more painful the film becomes for anyone hoping for any element of surprise or real drama.

Basically this movie is a waste of time, although it would probably amuse anyone who is really into the period of time in the late 60s, early 70s and the films from that time. I'd be just as happy if I never see it again though.
OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive

negative