Hair (1979)

...Everywhere, Daddy Daddy...

Genre: Musical Comedy Drama (USA, West Germany)

Starring: John Savage (Midnight Cowboy; The Thin Red Line), Treat Williams (The Devil's Own; Once Upon A Time In America)

Directed By: Milos Forman (Amadeus; One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest)

Overview: A young man from Oklahoma spends a few days with some New York Hippies before joining the army.

Acting: Actors. The thing about them is that some are good and some are bad. Well the top three roles in this one are well portrayed, but every other player is just too over the top for my liking. Maybe it's all the singing and dancing, who knows. Whatever, too hammy.
Rating: 5

Cinematography: The images are good especially in the end, but nothing ingenious. Some fancy dream sequences, some interesting choreography, but after all is said and done, TOO MUCH SINGING AND DANCING. I know it's a musical, but I just can't get over it.
Rating: 6

Script: The thing about movies like this is that they can be set in stone as far as dating is concerned. This is very dated. And I'm not only talking the hippy / Nam thing, I mean there's 2 songs about being black and liking Chocolate black boys and all that sort of thing. Yes I get it, but in this day and age, it's just a touch racist, regardless of the context. The songs too were very mediocre. Only the last song was worth keeping in my head. Very disappointing. It got to the point where I was dreading the next 5 minutes when music started. Ugh.
Rating: 4

Plot: The story is a good one, at least the ending is totally awesome. The whole pregnancy thing and the middle seemed really more like filler than anything though. Because so much music was involved, I'll include the progression of songs in the plot. I can tell you that it was way out there contextually. Only about half the songs made sense in the place they were put. It's almost like someone wrote a bunch of songs and tried to make a story out of it. No sir, didn't like it.
Rating: 5

Mood: This is a true musical. Fine. It's not fair for me to say that there were too many songs in this. But on the other hand also, Dancer in the Dark was a musical, and I loved that because it wasn't too many songs. Also The Wall was an entire album of music with NO dialogue, if I recall. So that can't be my beef cause I loved The Wall. Uh, fine. I'll just say it. Too much. Also this is way dated, but I said that already. If you like dancing...in a musical style... Then give it an extra point. But even the choreography in the songs suffered from time to time, too much Broadway influence, not enough film style.
Rating: 6

That's a bunch of high-ass Hippies. I'm guessing Speed and shoe polish cocktails.

Overall Rating: 52% (You'd Better Love Musicals)

Aftertaste: Yeah, yeah. If I hate musicals why did I watch this? Well turns out I remember seeing this as a child as well as hearing the soundtrack. Turns out it carried more memorabilia than it ever should have. God, we just suck things up when we're kids eh? Too dated for it to stand the test of time, unfortunately. They should have toned it down a bit. Dirty Hippies.