Hitchcoc Having listened to record a few hundred times, I was intrigued to see this movie. It turned out to be a visual representation of the song. The throwing away of the garbage in Stockbridge, the draft physical, the big dinner, and all that. It's a series of vignettes culled from the song. Arlo is really quite good. He has kind of a dizzy look about him. In a kind of Marx Bros. mentality, things fall apart around them but nothing ever seems to get to them. Of course, the most outrageous part is the effort of the police to find evidence against Guthrie and the litterers that shamed the investigation of the Kennedy assassination. It's a fun, relatively unmemorable movie that only means something to us sixties guys.

Milan This film is a high point of the alternative 60's cinema, that marked the end of that decade through films such as: "Head", "Trip","Bonnie & Clyde", "Blow-Up", and most notably "Easy Rider". This portrayal of rock'n'roll, free wheelin' lifestyle, is differently put in each of these movies, but Alice's restaurant is special. This is the movie not out of the novel or a short story, but out of a song, popular "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" by Arlo Guthrie, and it plays well on screen too. It's tripy, it's funny, and funny in a way that only life can direct it to be, it's political, but gently so, and it's making a point. A point about life, a point about music, a point about society and war, and most importantly a point about drugs. This picture is one of it's kind, and it will never fade with age. Arthur Penn did a good one here as well, and it probably came out the way it did because of Penn and Guthrie, and their unique talents combining. Brilliant!

MartinHafer I was only five years-old when this film debuted, so the 60s don't hold quite the same magical nostalgic hold on me that they hold for some older folks. I'm sure for many of them, this film was a nice little stroll down memory lane--but for me I mostly found it slow and annoying, though there were many bits and pieces that I liked. Additionally, as an American History teacher, I did appreciate how this was all like a time capsule--with both the good and bad of the era all rolled into one package.The movie purports to be based on real-life situations that occurred to Arlo Guthrie when he was 18. How close to the truth his song "Alice's Restauran" and this movie are is anyone's guess. However, I did appreciate that the film was not a whitewash of the era. While there was a lot of idealism, free love and self-expression, the film also had a very dark side that particularly came out at the end--and was a great way to show that the idealism of the 60s was starting to die a slow death. I know that the Leonard Maltin Guide disliked this downbeat ending, but I liked it--making the movie, in a way, like "Paradise Lost" meets the 1960s. The only problem I had with the ending is that it seemed to drag on way too long and could have benefited from a slight trimming to keep it focused and make it end a bit stronger.As for the funny moments, everything about the littering arrest was pretty funny. Making stacks of police photos of the "horrible crime scene" and then giving all this to the blind judge was pretty absurd! Also how this minor incident resulted in Guthrie's being rejected from the draft was kind of cute (though I wonder just how true that was--if it was, then that's nuts!).Other than the funny and poignant parts at the end about the dark side of the 60s, there wasn't a whole lot I liked about the film. It really seemed more like an aimless home movie--something crowds in the 60s liked (with the success of this film and EASY RIDER, it's pretty self-evident). But today--in the 21st century--I just can't see it making much of a positive impact on most younger viewers and will probably just elicit boredom as well as questions such as "who are Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger?". By the way, for a guy who was no actor, I was impressed with Arlo Guthrie's performance. It was better than you might expect considering he was a folk singer and not an actor. Too bad he didn't have too many credits after this film.

JoeytheBrit If Alice's Restaurant were to be made today it would most likely be filmed in a much grainier, true-to-life fashion, cinema verite wed to the modern taste for close-ups and hand-held camera. It's a style that adds an immediacy to the subjects that it films – and that is something that is badly lacking from this film. Alice's Restaurant stands now as nothing more than a curio, failing completely to capture or convey any sense of how life was like for the draft-dodging members of America's counter-culture. The best films that set themselves up as a form of social document succeed because they always make the era they have captured come alive; they give you a taste and a feel so true to the times that it is almost tangible. Alice's Restaurant simply points the camera at a group of people who possess ill-defined motivation and an almost complete lack of direction: change the hairstyles and the clothes and what takes place on screen could be taking place anywhere at any time in the past fifty years.Arlo Guthrie is no actor, but he's actually quite good in this because you do feel that, while he's obviously acting, he's also trying to be himself and so you get some insight into the man. He's invited to have sex by four different women in this film which is a bit of a stretch to be honest, but other than that he's entirely believable, despite lacking much presence on the screen. Patricia Quinn exudes an earthy vitality as Alice, while James Broderick as her husband Ray seems strangely at odds with the rest of the cast. Maybe it's his age or the cowboy-ish clothes, which make him look something like a good ol' boy, but he never really seems to fit in and fails to convince as the kind of man to whom Alice would be married.For all its counter-culture credentials the film, and its characters, ultimately resort to the most conventional of social traditions. The Brocks live in an old church, long abandoned by most of its ageing congregation, and seek to salvage their relationship by getting married once again while, at their reception, Ray drunkenly bemoans the gradual dispersion of their friends, with whom he wishes to found a commune. That's love, marriage, family and friendship,themes that, while not wholly exclusive from the social group the film examines, nevertheless make an unlikely topic. Maybe that explains why, like most of the rest of us, the hippie generation have today turned into their middle-class suburbanite parents.