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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
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Well loved classic.
A well loved classic that I re-visited for the third time. I did have an extra smile this time since I recall Scott Hamilton ice skating to the theme song in what was a very amusing skit on ice. The story is entertaining and the music fits well with the flavor of a tense moment in the sixties. When a country boy meets a group of homeless, city dwelling Hippies he's led on a strange journey he never expected, but will be touched by forever. A bizarre musical that is easily understood by any generation.
Chrissy K. McVay - Author
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Hair DVD
I really enjoyed the movie! For being an old movie, this recording of it was totally clear and no blips or other defects.
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Still so true, still so fresh
This is a cult film for many reasons. First because of the phenomenal success as a musical both in Broadway and London, then as a musical film. The film is close to the play and some of the provocation of the play is no longer provocative twelve years later. The discourse against the Vietnam war is no longer a protest song against the war itself, but a strong song demonstrating how the young people of these late 60s managed to bring the political establishment down. Milos Forman play with some situations at the end of the 70s like the narrow minded justice, the self-centered umbilical righteousness of the rich or of the little ones who have just one rank of power more than the powerless. He also heavily plays with the racial element and the sexual ambiguity he builds all the time. The film remains pleasant and thoughtful. And of course it is a tremendous thrill to remember these years when we have had the privilege, and that was not a chance, to live them. November 11, 1969, Nixon ordering mass celebration for the 1918 armistice, which became the order for teachers at all levels to take their students to the celebration and the march, supporting thus the invasion of Cambodia that was in full swing. And some dare give lessons in democracy to foreign countries. I also remember the long campaign for the impeachment of Nixon in 1973-1974 that will eventually lead to his resignation and the swearing in of Gerald Ford, the first Vice President, and eventually President, of the US who had not been elected, since he was appointed Vice President by the Senate after Spiro Agnew had to resign to face trial, conviction and sentence for embezzlement. Of course that makes us think of today when in 2000 a president of the US was not elected by the people but by the Supreme Court, or of a war that was rejected by millions world wide from the very start, and even before the start, and was started against the better judgment of the United Nations and of three permanent members of the Security Council. And some speak of a new world order based on the respect of others. Modern Western man seems to have some problems understanding that the world is changing and has already widely and wisely changed. Modern Western man seems to be kind of out of sync and to need special evening classes to learn that democracy wants the majority in the world to be the majority, and the West is far from that majority, and that if the Soviet block had been able to understand that market economy is not capitalism but that market economy can be either socialist or capitalist the Berlin Wall would have fallen, but the other way round, and that China has learned that lesson marvelously well and is at the foot of the wall they have to climb over to learn that their socialist market economy has to lead to political democracy, but they will, just like Vietnam was able to reconstruct itself after thirty years of vicious war aggression and damage. In other words, Hair is a perfect food for thought.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
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hate hippies, love hair
First: If you haven't seen the movie version of Hair, don't read the review that is a couple of entries below mine by James Ronald Colyer because he gives away the ending.
When I first started watching this I was sure I would want to clobber the cast, because I find hippies kind of annoying (I'm a liberal, but lived in Berkeley for a year and hated the contrived cartoonishness of hipsters there, which I imagine was the same in the 60s and 70s). And indeed, the characters in this movie act over-the-top hippie-dippie. But ultimately the director does reveal both the heart and the shallowness of the hippie movement. It is a loving tribute and a critical swipe all at once, which I really appreciated. The music is wonderful, the acting is at times wonderful, and the ending made me cry my eyes out. I think it is one of the most perfectly executed endings to a film I've ever seen, drama or musical. And the movie versions of the songs are fantastic. The singing in Aquarius is over the top, but in a way that makes it sublime, not Mariah-Carey-Celine-Dionne-Whitney-Houston annoying. The story line can be hokey and unrealistic at times, but by the end it doesn't matter...it all works works you up to being awed by the ending, which of course has much relevance today.
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All the aftertaste of a good long vomiting
As someone who despises the filthy, trashy, moronic hippie subculture that this cinematic atrocity (and the play that it was adapted from) were inspired by, I must admit that I have a peculiar bias against "Hair." This extraordinarily stupid film is notable for being the culmination of a '70s trend wherein corporate interests had entirely co-opted the witless counterculture; this particular disaster was produced almost a decade after the expiration date of that phenomenon. That Forman directed this doesn't make it any less painful. After all, he's also responsible for "Ragtime."
My entirely natural revulsion for the trappings of this movie has nothing to do with the fact that the performances are forced and wooden during its dramatic sequences, that its songs are embarrassingly hokey and that almost every aspect of its production - musical arrangements, choreography, set design - is hopelessly dated in a way that's neither charming or nostalgic. The whole film is nothing more or less than embarrassing. If you watch this with your friends, the results will be similar to those experienced during the accidental family reunion screening of a twenty-year-old home video of two cousins diddling each other.
My Mom thought that she liked this insipid film until she watched it last year and marveled at how incomparably bad it is. If your parents are boomers, they might also share her former questionable taste. But it would be a mistake to pretend that the majority of young Americans are any smarter now than they were back in the confused, degenerate 1960s. If you ever come across a former hippie and find him pleasantly reminiscing over his dead little era and whining over the anti-intellectual ugliness of hip-hop, you should nod approvingly (because god knows, he's entirely right about the repulsive idiocy of the present "youth culture"), and then spit in his old face for being a miserable hypocrite.
