Like Watching Paint Dry

In these times of being broke, I have checked out a few DVDs from the local libraries. One of them that I checked out was the 1973 film American Graffiti, which has to rank as one of the most overrated movies of all time. Not only is it overrated, but it is so out of whack in terms of cars, music, Wolfman Jack, and just about everything else. This movie drives me crazy because there is NOTHING that even approaches authenticity. It's like looking at a Revolutionary War movie and seeing the soldiers wearing wristwatches.

Granted, 1950s cars were still on the road in 1962 and driven by teens, but they weren't restored cars like these were, cars that could have appeared in Reno's Hot August Nights celebration or at Harrah's car collection. By the 1970s, collectors were getting interested in the classic fifties models, and so more and more these cars were being collected and restored. The cars should have looked far more worn in this movie to look realistic enough to be owned by high school students. There should have been more early sixties model cars in the flick to add to the realism.

And then there was the music. I heard only a couple of songs on the soundtrack that were actually recorded during the years of 1961-1962; the vast majority of them were strictly fifties numbers. Kids in 1962 were listening to the current hits and less on the oldies; in fact, there weren't actually oldies stations out there on the AM dial. Top 40 hits were the rule then. The least George Lucas could have done was write to Billboard (since there was no such thing as the internet at the time) for a list of the top hits of 1961 and 1962. For that matter, Wolfman Jack is out of place in this film, for he wasn't even on the West Coast, and nowhere near Modesto but near the California-Mexican border, until 1963. This was the beginning of his famous reign as the king of oldies radio at XERF, later XERB. I used to listen to him religiously in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which by then he was nationally and internationally known. Therefore, most of the music is out of place for the time depicted in the film. The early sixties was the era of the Four Seasons, the Beach Boys ("Surfin Safari" and "All Summer Long"--released in 1964--were used in the film), the girl groups, Chubby Checker, and many other acts that Lucas could have used for the soundtrack had he bothered to do his homework.

Didn't Lucas even bother to look at high school yearbooks from 1962? Most of the characters in this movie are dressed like Rebel Without a Cause rejects instead of wearing the types of clothes teens wore in the early sixties. They did NOT dress like they did in the fifties. The hairstyles are mostly off for both sexes.

I guess none of that matters when Lucas was trying to make some kind of sociological point in the film. To hell with authenticity when you're trying to make a point. I guess I am too picky when I watch films that are so brazenly unauthentic that I can barely stand to look at them. Not even the excellent performance by Mackenzie Phillips could save this dreck.

American Graffiti doesn't belong on ANY "top 100" list of great films.