Alice's Restaurant (1969)

It chronicles the lives of a group of friends. Arlo is a musician. Ray and Alice buy an old church and open a restaurant in it. There is another guy who has psychological scars from the time he was in the Vietnam war. And Arlo's father is in New York, with a serious illness. They throw a huge lunch on Thanksgiving day. Arlo is drafted to serve in Vietnam, but will he pass the selection exams?

This is best seen as a chronicle of an era, I think, or the end of an era. The dullness in it is a consequence of its realism. And this realism, up to a point, transforms the dullness into emotional empathy. A mise-en-scene highlight is a wedding ceremony which is marvelously staged, with some awesome scenes of odd-looking characters. Reinforcing what I had said, the main character here is not Arlo, it's the late sixties in the U.S.. But even with great effort I don't see a great movie here.

Rating: 50