This is How Movies Should Be Made

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

I Love You Alice B. Toklas is one nostalgic film, especially for those who partook in the hippie movement. It expresses some of the joy and frustrations of what it entails.Peter Sellers is your 40 something Jewish lawyer from Los Angeles who has put off matrimony, concentrating on work and material success. Now he's ready to take the plunge with Joyce Van Patten and nothing thrills his parents Salem Ludwig and Jo Van Fleet than to see their son final settle down.But a chance encounter with hippie chick Leigh Taylor-Young on the Freeway where she's hitchhiking and he tunes in, turns on, and drops out. The second is the most important when after a night of some wild sex Taylor- Young gives him some of those marijuana laced brownies so popular in the day. Even his fiancé and parents partake and the result is the most hilarious scene in the film.I suppose that people have to have a fling at something equivalent of hippie when they're young. Sad to say there is a time when one has to buckle down and assume a few responsibilities for yourself. If we all could be hippies that would be nice, but we all never will be. It was no accident that they were called flower 'children'.Which brings me to the ending of this film. Sellers eventually has issue with Taylor-Young and they split, but can't commit to his former life and the relationships therein. Director Hy Averback gives us a happy ending which is both funny and yet sad in a way because we really don't know what Sellers will do because he doesn't know himself. I feared the worst for Peter.A nice cast supports Sellers and Jo Van Fleet has to be singled out as the ultimate Jewish mother. Also take note of Herb Edelman as Sellers brother-in-law, confidante, and a rebound man from way back.Nice film. Too bad we aren't all hippies. And it would have to be all of us to make it work.

There was box office in capitalizing on, and for some, touting, the growing California counterculture in this other films. Not a bad trip yet was likely on their radar. The 'Hollywood' not involved in the mess of "Skidoo" or the heady "Head" made around the same time, went for a a trip presented as a more accessible and intimate story and got themselves a more 'important' actor in Peter Sellers for '...Toklas'.This is a must-see anyway; well-crafted and I like the bit of a look at period Los Angeles. The smugness and progressive's way of dissing the "square" middle-class using the movie amongst others to give them the finger makes it difficult to enjoy the parts they intend as humor. I enjoy Sellers so much more another 1968 film "The Party" an affectionate, goof, warm-satirical look at their own fabu crowd up in the 'hills'.

This is a film that I strongly think your opinion of it will depend on your age. Younger folks who have no recollection of the 1960s will probably find this film less interesting. Those who vividly remember this strange decade will probably get more from the film. Me, I was only a young kid during this time, so my opinion seems to fall somewhere in the middle.The movie begins with Peter Sellers playing a Jewish attorney living in Los Angeles. His life is very "normal" and he is on track to be quite successful and marry his sweetheart (Joyce Van Patten). However, when his brother's lover (Leigh Taylor-Young) slips Sellers and his fiancé and his parents a dish of hashish-laced brownies, Sellers' straight-laced veneer vanishes and now the 35 year-old "square" wants to drop out and become a hippie. Much of the rest of the film concerns the ins and outs of such a life and by the end of the film, it seems that Sellers isn't content with either life...and still longs for a deeper sense of meaning.I noticed that many people called this film a comedy. While there are some mildly funny moments, I wouldn't describe it as this at all and it's NOT much like Sellers' other films. I am NOT saying it's a bad film--just not exactly a comedy. Instead, it's like a time capsule--an interesting one, but one that many probably won't find all that compelling unless they lived during this time. Generally, the film is well made and acted and it's worth a look--and that's really about all.FYI--The reference to Alice B. Toklas regards her being the first to publish a recipe for marijuana or hashish brownies. You hear her name sung repeatedly throughout the film but otherwise the film has nothing to do with her nor her lover, Gertrude Stein.

I'm pretty sure that "I Love You Alice B. Toklas" seemed silly to 1968 viewers, both "squares" and "potheads." Fed electric brownies made from a box (rather than from the most famous recipe in The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook), straight-laced but simmering Harold Fine (sic.!) (Peter Sellers) and perks secretary/fiancée, start giggling even before finishing ingesting brownies. Watching them playing drunks, I marvel that none of the film-makers knew 1) that (ingested marijuana takes some time to kick in and (2) that people who are stoned don't act like people who are drunk.Peter Sellers was good as the seething and very hirsute lawyer, Harold Fine. He thinks he is fine, despite having a nagging and materialistic fiancée (Joyce Van Patten) to augment the nagging of his materialistic and empty-headed mother (Jo Van Fleet wasted in a stereotype Jewish mother role). The nuclear family also jellyfish father (Salem Ludwig) and blissed-out hippie brother, Herbie (David Arkin). Sellers is also good at the end when he has burned out or is on a bad trip and is weary of all the freeloaders who have moved into his apartment (and started to share his flower-child free-spirited bedmate). His goofy "Love, Peace, Happiness" period is silly without being funny. As his muse, Leigh Taylor-Young is very attractive. The fake tattoo of a Monarch butterfly on her upper thigh is treated with reverence by Fine and not doubt inspired fantasies in the male audience of licking it up and proceeding under her very short mini skirts ("free love"). And bubblegum music group Harper's Bazaar supply a typically saccharine title song two or three times to complete the trivialization of the Toklas/ Stein couple.There are some sight gags on psychedelically painted cars and the bizarre couture of the freeloaders (and the family of eleven Mexican client claiming whiplash, all wearing neck braces) and the surprise that a casket stuffed into the back of the psychedelic car Fine has while his car is in the garage doesn't fall out.