ALICE'S RESTAURANT (1969) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Arthur Penn
Arlo Guthrie, Pat Quinn, James Broderick,
Michael McClanathan, Geoff Outlaw, Tina Chen,
M. Emmett Walsh, Pete Seeger, Shelley Plimpton
A late-'60s time capsule based on Arlo Guthrie's extended talking song about Alice and Ray and their restaurant in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and hippies and cops and the draft and a red Volkswagen microbus and two tons of garbage. There's almost no story, really, just a bunch of stuff that happens along the way, and not everybody who watches the movie will be able to relate to that, but Penn's hang-loose approach nicely captures an era and an attitude whose impact on the culture transcended its relatively short shelf life. Pete Seeger turns up to serenade a dying Woody Guthrie, and Shelley Plimpton sniffles her way through a brief but fetching cameo as a groupie with a head cold.
Arthur Penn
(1922-2010)
