Fans of Robert Downey Jr. who are just discovering (or rediscovering) this talented actor thanks to the box office smashes IRON MAN and TROPIC THUNDER may be surprised to learn that RDJ has more than 50 film credits to his name and logged his first credited role at age 5. This movie, released a year after Downey's electrifying performance as Julian Wells in LESS THAN ZERO, pairs the 23-year-old second-generation actor (son of actress Elsie Ford and director Robert Downey, Sr.) with 19-year-old second-generation actor Kiefer Sutherland (son of Donald) as college buds Ralph Carr and Scott Denney, grads from their small-town Maryland high school just two years prior, as they enter the infamous "Summer of Love", the summer of 1969.
We first meet Ralph and Scott hitchhiking their way home from college on spring break, allowing for some shorthand character profiling: Scott is the intellectual, fresh-faced, optimistic anti-war hippie wannabe with a smile forever planted on his face except when lamenting that he has yet to get laid; Ralph is his chain-smoking, profane, cynical opposite, a sex-crazed (bragging he's bagged 14 women) drug-toting slacker wild child who's still a scared kid who can't wait to get home to Mom at heart. Ralph's got a kid sister who got all the brains in the family ("But I'm ugly, so it's O.K.," Ralph reasons), Beth (a 17-year-old Winona Ryder), who's got a mad crush on Scott, which drives a wedge between Ralph and Scott; Scott's got an older brother who joined the Marines rather than go to college, Alden (Christopher Wynne), whose impending departure to Vietnam drives a wedge between them as well as between Scott and his WWII vet father (Bruce Dern). You soon get the idea: Ralph's family is the more liberal, looser one (run by loose-moralled lush widow Ev, played by Joanna Cassidy); Scott's is the more conservative, uptight one (with wound-tight stuck-in-the-50s Cliff and Jessie, played by Bruce Dern and Mariette Hartley). The parallelism gets tiresome after a while, and by the time the inevitable happens (Alden goes MIA, Ralph flunks out of school and discovers he's about to be drafted, Scott and Beth hit the road and head for Canada to avoid Scott suffering the same fate), the movie veers off into Cliché-Land, and by the time the Only-In-Hollywood ending rolls around, you're ready to either throw things at the TV or snap your DVD in half.
The script is uneven at best (Ralph and Scott go on the road in a VW van, go out to San Francisco, and then seem to turn right around and go back to Maryland again), and none of the characters are very well written. Downey and Sutherland share top billing, but Sutherland's Scott is clearly meant to be the main protagonist with RDJ's Ralph as a darker reflection on the "hippie" lifestyle taken to extreme; of the two, Ralph comes across more fully developed, aided considerably by RDJ's mad acting skills, while Scott never seems to come alive because Sutherland seems to have just one expression for every emotion except anger. Ryder is really gorgeous and does a good job with what she's given, but she's saddled with some horribly clunky anti-war speeches and clichés that make her character seem flat and one-note.
Just as in LESS THAN ZERO, RDJ once more plays a very convincing stoner. Whether he's taking hits off the remains of a joint left over from spring break while reflecting on why he didn't finish DON QUIXOTE ("It had a lot of...pages") or stripping to his briefs while tripping on a double dose of LSD in the high school gym, each drug-filled scene serves both as a reminder of just how good an actor he is (considering his own substance abuse issues through the 80s and 90s) and as a chilling reminder of the Hell awaiting him just a few years down the road.
1969 isn't a bad movie, but neither is it a good one. Catch it on cable and don't waste your money viewing it any other way.
We first meet Ralph and Scott hitchhiking their way home from college on spring break, allowing for some shorthand character profiling: Scott is the intellectual, fresh-faced, optimistic anti-war hippie wannabe with a smile forever planted on his face except when lamenting that he has yet to get laid; Ralph is his chain-smoking, profane, cynical opposite, a sex-crazed (bragging he's bagged 14 women) drug-toting slacker wild child who's still a scared kid who can't wait to get home to Mom at heart. Ralph's got a kid sister who got all the brains in the family ("But I'm ugly, so it's O.K.," Ralph reasons), Beth (a 17-year-old Winona Ryder), who's got a mad crush on Scott, which drives a wedge between Ralph and Scott; Scott's got an older brother who joined the Marines rather than go to college, Alden (Christopher Wynne), whose impending departure to Vietnam drives a wedge between them as well as between Scott and his WWII vet father (Bruce Dern). You soon get the idea: Ralph's family is the more liberal, looser one (run by loose-moralled lush widow Ev, played by Joanna Cassidy); Scott's is the more conservative, uptight one (with wound-tight stuck-in-the-50s Cliff and Jessie, played by Bruce Dern and Mariette Hartley). The parallelism gets tiresome after a while, and by the time the inevitable happens (Alden goes MIA, Ralph flunks out of school and discovers he's about to be drafted, Scott and Beth hit the road and head for Canada to avoid Scott suffering the same fate), the movie veers off into Cliché-Land, and by the time the Only-In-Hollywood ending rolls around, you're ready to either throw things at the TV or snap your DVD in half.
The script is uneven at best (Ralph and Scott go on the road in a VW van, go out to San Francisco, and then seem to turn right around and go back to Maryland again), and none of the characters are very well written. Downey and Sutherland share top billing, but Sutherland's Scott is clearly meant to be the main protagonist with RDJ's Ralph as a darker reflection on the "hippie" lifestyle taken to extreme; of the two, Ralph comes across more fully developed, aided considerably by RDJ's mad acting skills, while Scott never seems to come alive because Sutherland seems to have just one expression for every emotion except anger. Ryder is really gorgeous and does a good job with what she's given, but she's saddled with some horribly clunky anti-war speeches and clichés that make her character seem flat and one-note.
Just as in LESS THAN ZERO, RDJ once more plays a very convincing stoner. Whether he's taking hits off the remains of a joint left over from spring break while reflecting on why he didn't finish DON QUIXOTE ("It had a lot of...pages") or stripping to his briefs while tripping on a double dose of LSD in the high school gym, each drug-filled scene serves both as a reminder of just how good an actor he is (considering his own substance abuse issues through the 80s and 90s) and as a chilling reminder of the Hell awaiting him just a few years down the road.
1969 isn't a bad movie, but neither is it a good one. Catch it on cable and don't waste your money viewing it any other way.