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

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

The most famous movie to look at the younger generation's disillusionment with the American way of life is "The Graduate", but Francis Ford Coppola's "You're a Big Boy Now" also offers some insight. The young protagonist is a character very much like Ben Braddock: born into an affluent family that plans for him to be a big success. But this young man actively seeks out a new life, and he befriends a go-go dancer...but that's not all.A lot of the humor is cutaway humor. In the end the movie isn't a masterpiece but has some funny stuff. It's sort of a cross between the zany comedies that dominated the '60s and a Woody Allen movie. One of the most interesting things is the soundtrack. The Lovin' Spoonful did the music, and it includes some songs - among them "Amy's Theme" - that I had heard but never knew whence they came.I recommend the movie. It's a perceptive look at the youth culture, and also at mid-'60s New York. We even get shots of movie theaters running noted movies of the era! It's really a movie that you gotta love. I bet that when "The Godfather" debuted, people were shocked that it was directed by the same man who directed "You're a Big Boy Now".And remember, wooden legs and aggressive chickens.

This film, sadly, has been lost in the forgetfulness of time. I happily found a copy of it on the Internet and just watched it, after waiting 47-years since my last viewing in 1966. It was a fresh and funny as that day I first saw it as a crazy, hormone-driven teen. As I watched it, I marveled on just how "ahead of its time" it actually was, and how many great films have stolen so many of its artistic riffs, so many of them redolent of the Swinging Sixties and all of the wild, drug-fueled looniness that characterized that brief period of time. I realized that without this seminal film, there probably wouldn't ever have been a "Graduate," or even a Dustin Hoffman. To see the great character actors who have gone on to spectacular careers in the many years since was especially thrilling to see, including Geraldine Page, Rip Torn, Tony Bill, Julie Harris (would there ever have been a "Thing" in The Men in Black without a "Miss Thing," curiously starring a much older Rip Torn?) and the always solid Karen Black in her first screen role. It's absolutely amazing how many of Coppola's early films have launched such stellar careers. But perhaps this wonderful film owes so much of its depth to the co-starring role portrayed by the luminous Elizabeth Hartman, who's twisted and soulful performance remains one for the ages. If you smoke pot or occasionally do "harder things" that have a propensity to expand the mind, this is suggested viewing in any case. This movie wonder is a perfectly hilarious, perfecting engaging, perfect little film. Catch it if you can.P.S.— I nearly forgot to give Honorable Mention to the superbly crafted soundtrack by the iconic 60's pop group, The Lovin' Spoonful. Long before it was fashionable for rock groups to create music for film, the Spoonful did it, and did it more than justice... it was perfect. I just downloaded the song, "Amy's Tune" ("Lonely"), and am enjoying it as I write this review... ah, for the halcyon daze of my youth.

At its most beneficial now as a fun time watching Francis Ford Coppola be a kid his first time in the sandbox on the ground floor of New Hollywood, this adolescent wet dream---in that it's a great time but not terribly memorable---is a young example of the modern story of a young man's anxious initiation into the big world as well as of the imminent counterculture awareness, not owing to a concentration on drugs or long hair but the insertion of the up-and-coming music, the hottest dance fads, and crisp social attitudes. As with The Graduate, there is the sensation of driving for something new other than the conformist, disappointing world of the socially safe adults. By now, though, we've hopefully become tired of the increasingly low common denominator movies about the induction of horny young men into the mores of sex. But first of all, this light, quirky sophomore directorial effort---following his requisite Roger Corman warm-up debut---was the pioneer of the bunch.In late 1966, Coppola was a wunderkind green out of UCLA, and at the same time his second film is of the most base, commercial genre, it reflects Coppola's more scholarly influences, incorporating self-reflexive formal strategies originally conceived of in the European New Waves, and thus, well received by critics and the public alike. This, I think, is at the hub of most "new waves" in this country's cinema. Tarantino and Rodriguez made debuts twenty-five years later by taking on marketable genre plot exercises by fueling them an inimitable mix of influences from their encyclopedic knowledge of cinema. Their favorite genres were of the raw, gritty grind house era that was to take advantage of the breaking of ground and opening of doors Coppola and his peers were revving up to do when he came onto the scene with You're a Big Boy Now.This and The Graduate, the more mature film that would follow, concern young men and older women. They both spring much entertainment from the nebbishy youth's blunders, before the luckless boys quickly finish botching up and triumph over this chump called virginity. Nichols served Buck Henry's sharp, sophisticated, understated screenplay by creating the most refined comic atmosphere with brilliant cinematography. Coppola, rather, simply enjoys himself as director, and his film is awash with recycled sight gags, lively performances and a spirited soundtrack by the Lovin' Spoonful. I can't decide whether he's a kid in the sandbox his first time behind the camera or a bull in a china shop, as filmmakers are when they are passionately in love with the films they grew up with, the filmmaking process and film, period.The bungling young man this time is Peter Kastner. He's ambushed consecutively by a cartoonishly emasculating string a caricatured female types: a don't-wear-shoes-after-Labor-Day-style mother, a jazzy landlady and a chops-busting brunet. Doubted by his father and deeply wounded by one of the sexy trifecta, in due course he's on speaking terms solely with the family dog, named Dog. Yeah. It's hit or miss. Coppola is often too self-conscious about being charming. His hero is too blameless and starry-eyed. The plot is too random. Mike Nichols was able to illustrate in The Graduate exactly how many promises this broad premise makes, and was also able to do that with such masterful restraint and technique. But hey, before Mike Nichols' masterpiece, how was anyone to see that? Meanwhile, we're entrusted with the query of how perfectly decent, attractive fellows like Big Boy and Benjamin manage to reach their mid-20s in such far-along phases of inexperience. Maybe they drone bemusing little maxims to themselves and keep busy with work and studies until they're assailed by the Mrs. Robinsons of the world. I can see how that was the prevailing male fantasy in media back then, and why shows and movies have continued to have a shade of underdog in their young male romantic leads in the ensuing generations, from these guys to the John Cusack, John Hughes and spring break movies, to Jason Biggs' penetrating breakthrough role, to the Judd Apatow comedies of today.

I remember the day I bought the movie for $2 in Bennington, Vermont. I was in a bad mood that day. I read on the back of the VHS box how this was FFC's master's thesis at UCLA and thought that it could be a cool viewing. I watched it later that day and it changed my mood to great, and it became my favorite movie.Some of the sequences and lines and maddeningly dizzy and dizzyingly mad. The names and objects and places Bernard gives to initials is wonderful. Barbara Darling dancing up in that cage in the underground club! The music (Darling Be Home Soon is a masterpiece)! The cinematography! The deliverance of sexy lines! (Hair?! You collect, hair!?"). Del Grado's poetic musings on life (funny where they got him ...). The views of 1966 New York City, pre-World Trade Center. I've seen it about 50 times always trying to figure out the theme, and I still haven't come up with one, although, Bernard goes from a milk-spilling virgin to a maturing lad who finally opens his eyes to life and stops spilling milk.That $2 VHS copy is gone. I wish I could find another copy, or, one on DVD.It's the most dizzy, maddeningly wonderful sexy piece or cinema I've seen, or ever will experience.So is there a way to find love with a woman like Amy Partlett with streaks of Barbara Darling that run through her veins? (And no, I don't collect hair, and stopped spilling milk years ago).