Very well executed

good back-story, and good acting

A different way of telling a story

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

This is a soporific display of the early anti-war (Vietnam) protest movement and roots of the middle-class youth hippie culture. There's some minimal trumpeting of the civil rights movement, but not much.As such, it's almost sleep-inducing and lacking in character. There's nice scenery and some decent performances, good music and idealistic sentiment, but unfortunately all caught up in truly stereotypical characters, especially the high school staff, and plenty of maudlin, routine behavior. And done in a manner that lacks the same intensity of the period, a period on the verge of the breakdown of family due to social and political upheaval, large-scale demonstrations, violence-imbued war coverage on the TV news that spilled over into society in general.It would have been more appropriate had Sunshine left in a VW van of Manson cult members rather than ordinary hippies, albeit more cynical.

Couldn't go to sleep the other night. So I got up, flipped on the tube & this movie was on.Film makers bit off more than they could chew. Just as ambitious in scope as "Forrest Gump" was. But Gump read like an fairy-tale where an extraordinarily lucky man guides us through the era. TGMB just relies on tired clichés to tell the story. Almost like a Broadway musical where actors have to ham it up. Every character's purpose was to fill a silly 60's archetype.Take how we're introduced to Finnegan: Hugging his black maid & receiving a framed picture of MLK. Criminey, talk about heavy-handed. Why not just give him a t-shirt saying "I Heart Black People"?Sunshine: "Isn't free love groovay, man? Oh no, I didn't have my period." Mary Beth: "I want to go to Berkeley, not square UCLA." Uh, excuse me? There was nothing square about LA in the 60s. Rather than take the time to demonstrate what made Berkeley unique, we just hear this brat whine about not going there.Can't even remember the black kid's name. He was just a prop used to show how racially tolerant the other kids are.Thing is, period pieces don't have to be this cheesy. Take "Dazed & Confused." Look how we're introduced to the football hero, Randall Floyd. We don't first see him on the football field. In fact, we never see him play football. We're introduced to him in class, inviting his nerdish poker buddies to a party.In "Dazed" feminism isn't a casual by-product of some chick getting knocked up. It's much more organic, more serious than that. It's refined in the ladies' room over a flip discussion about Gilligan's Island. Serious ideas can grow in the most mundane settings. But real life is like that.Some of the warm comments here note that the themes in this movie are still relevant. I agree! Which is why I feel so disappointed by this piece of Baby-Boomer pornostalgia.

I saw this back in '94 when it was finally released. Apparently because Orion pictures was in bankruptcy, I think, the movie had not been released a couple of years earlier.I have problem remembering details partly because I haven't seen it in a long time, but I do remember it as a very dull movie. I kept debating whether to walk out of it. The store was not at all interesting or engaging. Was a 3rd rate America Graffiti imitation. None of the performances make it worth watching either. One of the biggest disappointments since a local newspaper reviewer gave it a high rating.

The first 20 minutes are pretty fun to watch, giving me some nostalgic feelings, which I find pretty positive. But after that it's getting way too serious, which in itself isn't bad, but it doesn't work in this movie. A lot of issues of that time are being told in the following 70 minutes, but nothing is worked out and told properly. It couldn't hold my attention... Soundtrack is good though. 5/10