st-shot Harold Fine (Peter Sellers) is a successful button downed LA accident attorney living life by the numbers with a modicum of passion. Preparing listlessly to marry he runs across flower child Nancy (Leigh-Taylor Young)who offers him an alternative view as well as some mind altering weed brownies that in combination cause him to go Leary and drop out. Hooking up with Nancy they live in his car for awhile before getting a crash pad complete with hanger ons. While Harold is really tuned into Nancy he's turned off by the chaotic leisure and presence of the dead beats. Caught between two worlds, conflicted about where he belongs Harold seesaws with modern day existence.Alice falls somewhere between Reefer Madness and Up in Smoke with its comic exploration of the notorious herb. While it is free of the bug eyed crazies that populated Reefer its just as dishonest with the response by its cast of characters (freaks and straights of all ages) who manage to peak two bites in then go on an oh wow laughing jag for half a day. Made within a year of The Summer of Love and a year before Woodstock it is more a burlesque attempt for mass consumption that would later be more fully informed by the gravitas of Cheech and Chong. Quaint and broad as it may be it does re-classify pot however from the insane drug of Dragnet and Reefer Madness with the comic attitude taken towards Prohibition in silent and early sound films. Sellers rolls well with the fatuous script and Taylor-Young fills the hippie chic bill with ease but Jo Van Fleet as Harold's mother overacts outrageously along with a bit of feigned stoning by the rest of the cast that beats this labored idea into the ground in no time..

jaster-7 This one of these movies I remember when it came out but I was too young to see it at the time, yet I remember a touch of controversy around it. As I've now just seen it today (finally!), I realize now controversy was due to the free use of drugs in reference and in use in this movie. It's a broad yet clever story of a man learning to feel, and all the trouble that gets him into. Sellers is great and so is Van Fleet as his mom - her laugh is so infectious when they all inadvertently get stoned on pot brownies, from an Alice B. Toklas recipe - hilarious. (Is that where the term 'toke' comes from?) Someone mentioned this movie is a time-capsule, and I couldn't agree more – it truly is a commentary of social upheaval focusing on a specific time when Stein and Toklas were on the scene, and how this uptight Jewish lawyer gets caught up in the hippy movement and love is everywhere. Even though a parody and farcical, I enjoyed some unexpected laughs at the clever dialog - so many great quotes in this movies! Like when entering into the throes of passion with the always beaming, blissed out Nancy, "Kiss my face…kiss my lips…kiss my ANKH!" – it's classic Peter Sellers comedy. (I'm not sure if that's a spoiler?) The film is highly concerned with marijuana and its use, and I found it refreshing and so much more open than what attitudes and views seem to be now – I don't think you could see a film like this now coming out of Hollywood. The wonderful relish with which they enjoy the brownies is priceless! Anyway I think this movie is all about the chaos of feelings – when we open up to them - wow! They can feel like a tidal wave of wonder, but invariably wreck havoc with the secure and stable foundations of your life – and no matter how you try and put them back in the box, once you've tasted freedom like that, there's no going back.

Bill Slocum Los Angeles lawyer Harold Fine (Peter Sellers) is one hash brownie away from a total re-examination of his life. But is he really ready for the consequences of a mid-life freak-out?Watching "I Love You, Alice B. Toklas" today is to see how the hippie subculture was seen by Middle America back when the Beatles were still together and Woodstock a year or so down the road. Fine doesn't want to upset his Jewish mother (Jo Van Fleet), but those brownies combined with radiant hippie chick Nancy (Leigh Taylor-Young) is too much for him to resist.One problem with "I Love You, Alice B. Toklas" is that it's really two slapped-together films in one. The first, running an hour, is a well-observed character study, light on laughs but diverting, featuring Harold as prisoner of his middle-class American existence. The second, Harold's hippie freak-out, is a half-hour "Love, American Style" episode utterly at odds with the Harold Fine we have come to know. Sex with Nancy, sure, but are you supposed to believe Harold would be handing out flowers at intersections with just a little help from Duncan Hines? Sellers looks a bit like John Lennon with a long-hair wig, but it isn't enough to convince.Director Hy Averback worked on several of my favorite "M*A*S*H" episodes, but he's out of his element with this early cinematic treatment of the counterculture. Kids in bad wigs say "groovy" and "far out" in a way that feels as strained as seeing someone shout "Twenty-Three Skidoo" in a 1920s movie or "Friend Me On Facebook" today. Nancy even wants to go to the funeral of a Fine family friend because she thinks death is beautiful. Groovy!Taylor-Young is part of my problem with this movie. She's beautiful, yes, in that impossible must-be-from-California-or-Sweden way, but she's really put there for sex appeal only, despite setting up an interesting character the film never develops. After she and Harold come to a crisis over her free-love style, she falls by the wayside. Taylor-Young plays her character so wide-eyed and innocent you want more of a resolution of her relationship with Harold. Instead she's left as a go-go-dancing fantasy figure.To the extent Sellers does shine here, he does so playing off the other characters, particularly Van Fleet and Van Patten, the latter of whom steals what's there of the show as the grasping, aging wanna-be wife. When Harold offers an "area" for when they might be married, she responds: "I know from areas, but I want is a date."Otherwise, this is a sub-par movie with some fun moments that never really come together, disappointingly so given that there's real potential to see Sellers cut up here. Instead, he plays one of his most buttoned-down characters for an hour, followed by a totally different, wacky guy thereafter. If only Sellers and the writers had done more to connect the dots, "I Love You, Alice B. Toklas" might have been a worthy Sellers comedy.

angelsunchained " I LOve You Alice B. Toklas " is a 60s gem. Peter Sellers is out-standing as an uptight, highly successful, Jewish lawyer, engaged to be married, who falls in love with his hippie brother's hippie girl and "drops out". For those too young to remember the 60s this film will probably appear to be meaningless, but it's a classic example of what thousands of Americans went through during this revoltionary decade. The film however is stolen by the incredible beauty of Leigh Taylor-Young who was making her film debut. What a beauty! A real 10. Nothing fake about her. I recall seeing this movie when it first came out in 1968 when I was 10 years old. Everyone in the theater was rolling in the aisles with laughter. And every guy there had a "crush" on Leigh Taylor Young.So, turn on the lava-lamb, put on some love-beads, put some pillows on the floor, take off your shoes, and go back to time and enjoy this 1960s comedy classic.