A tad uneven, but still quite good

Woodyanders

Arlo Guthrie's hilariously mordant 20 minute story song gets adopted into an affably whimsical, episodic, occasionally funny and ultimately quite downbeat and sobering free-form feature by director Arthur Penn that astutely captures the key issues and concerns of the 60's hippie counterculture: dodging the draft, smoking grass, getting hassled by the pigs, being persecuted by grossly intolerant, narrow-minded, repressive straight conformist squares, trekking all over the country to find your true self, and defying everyday social conventions so you can do your own thing, man. The rambling, just barely there plot centers on the winningly droll, breezy and irreverent Guthrie's pilgrimage through the counterculture, a bizarre, eventful, eye-opening journey of self-discovery that reaches its peak when Arlo gets arrested for illegally dumping trash, thus making Arlo ineligible for wartime service in the army due to his disreputable status as an unrehabilitated criminal (the scenes at the army center are riotous, with M. Emmet Walsh in a gut-busting early role as the gruff Group W sergeant whose staccato motormouth way of talking renders everything he says incomprehensible).

Police chief William Obanheim appears as himself and proves to be a hugely likable good sport by allowing himself to be the endearingly humbled recipient of a few right-on japes made about uptight authority figures. "Glen and Randa" 's Shelley Plimpton has a nice cameo as a cute groupie who hits on Arlo at a party. The film's precise, clear-eyed portrait of the painfully gradual disintegration of flower power idealism and the cynicism and disillusionment that followed in its wake nowadays seems all too grimly true and prescient, with the volatile relationship between vulgar, boorish, obnoxious swinger James Broderick and his frustrated, irritated wife Pat Quinn (they play Ray and Alice Brock, the owners of the titular restaurant) brilliantly reflecting the turbulence and capriciousness of the period. Somewhat erratic and uneven, with a shaky tone that uneasily shifts between comedy and drama, this quirky, laid-back, naturalistic historical curiosity piece provides a lyrical and poignant time capsule of the 60's that for all its admitted imperfections nonetheless remains haunting and effective.

score 8/10

Woodyanders 2 November 2007

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1756826/