For example, each character represents an archetype. The smart black kid from Watts with a scholarship to Princeton who grows up to be a US Senator; the hippie chick who gets knocked up and valiantly hides the pregnancy from the free-wheeling drifter father, only to move to San Francisco; the noble civil rights enthusiast quoting Bob Dylan who becomes a protester and then a University professor; the shy girl who narrates it all because she grew up to be a writer. And of course someone dies in Vietnam. Vomit. the school teachers are all a-mur-ican patriot fascists. Most of the parents too.
The one interesting item, that it all occurs on the opening night of the Watts riots, gets lost after the first half of the film. What could have been an interesting story about a wealthy white kid and his family's black servant's son, who grew up like brothers, and ventured into Watts during the riots to retrieve and protect the latter's grandmother, just goes back to the basics in the middle and focuses on the fears of an enlistee and the pregnant hippie. There's an anti-war protester who gets killed while in custody. It devolves into a riot on the front lawn of the high-school. Noah Wiley pours gasoline onto the school's statue, turning the civil war era soldier into a flaming totem, while Dermot Mulroney fist fights the principal. Not as funny as you might expect. And not as compelling as the filmmaker hoped. Blah.
I only finished it to hear the obligatory voice-over epilogue of where each character ended up. Total cliches. Bleck. Except that the hippie named her baby Pirate. Ha!
Of course they have to sell the movie with shirtless teen boys.I think that the new "This" channel 26.4 is going to lead to similar reviews in the future. There's something pleasant and indulgent about trash on a Saturday afternoon.
