"Well, I've gotta go.
Where are you going?
Nowhere.
Will you mind if I come along?"
George Lucas' early film is on my old debts' list. When I was a child I watched it on tv without any deeper effect on me, so this time I was curious how it will work a cult (or already a classic?) story from the early '60s which decade is more about my parents than me.
The story is simple: Curt (an amazingly sympathic character by Richard Dreyfuss) and Steve (!) finally get a chance (a scholarship) to leave their small-time hick town. They have one night to say good-bye to all their memories, loves, friends and everything what they loved and hated the place where they grew up. So the diegetic time is limited to one long night but the doubts and the changing emotions of their characters fill out easily the two hours of the film.
"Where were you in '62?"
If your younghood is from the sixties then it's a must. Otherwise it is a strong 7 out of 10: You'll love the music (the film with its continous music is actually a video clip of the age), the characters (our heroes are exactly between the small town road king and the dork "Toad"), the hair gel, the huge pimped cars, the rollerskater drive-inn waitresses, the cool radio jockeys, the high school balls and so on. A generational nostalgy on the fifties when somehow the roads were longer and wider and when The Beach Boys' shitty surfin' music didn't poison yet the real rock 'n roll...
I emphasized the word "exactly": if Lucas isn't the best director, which is undoubtedly true, he is (together with Spielberg) still one of the most talented to choose and form characters with whom the audience can identify. Offering easy identification is among the most decisive attribute in experience a story, and maybe the most important cinematic value of their movies which serves Curt Henderson's, Han Solo's, Indiana Jones', and all the characters of Tom Hanks' success. Just think on Harrison Ford's tiny part as a horny Bob Falfa - he is so "real" that you wanna watch all his movies immediately.
Finally an easter egg:
Are you a nostalgic or a competitive type?
7/10
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