Delayed Reaction: Hair

[Note: This is part of a project I'm calling "A Century in a Month". The idea is that I'm going to start with a movie from about 100 years ago and pick a series of connected films until I get to the present. The rules I set this time are release years, per IMDB, can't be more than 5 years apart. I can't repeat the same connection although I can reuse the same type of connection. That means if I use "movies directed by Scorsese" to connect two, I can't use Scorsese as a connection again but I can use a director as a linking element again. I'm not really sure why I'm doing this, but it seems like a fun game.]

Connection to Marathon Man: Both star Richard Bright

 

Premise: The Broadway musical about hippies comes to the big screen.

 

I get why Hair was such a hit on Broadway. It came out in 1967-68 at the peak of the hippie movement. It was an incredibly timely show. And with all musicals, at the end of the day, what’s most important is that the music is great. As a movie coming out in 1979, it was going to lose some luster. It was a period piece at that point and the hippies were already seen as a bit of a joke by then. Or, if not a joke, they were a dated idea. Under those conditions, this feels like the best version of Hair I could’ve expected as a film.

 

The cast is good. Treat Williams feels like a star right away. I wasn’t totally ready for Beverly D’Angelo as a young person. She’s the mom in Vacation or older in my memories. It shouldn’t be a surprise that it was well made with Milos Forman at the helm. It’s his follow up to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. This was definitely helped by the fact that I knew nothing about the show, so that ending really hit me. That shit was grim.

 

I must be honest about something though. I really wasn’t rooting for the main characters that much. Had I been alive in the 60s, even if I was young then, I suspect hippies would’ve annoyed me. In this, they sure felt like deadbeats who broke a lot of rules, disturbed a lot of peace, then acted like the victims when they faced any consequences. Thank god the music was so catchy, because it distracted me from how much I was actually annoyed by these characters.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend