Home | Movies By Year | Movies from 1968


I Love You, Alice B. Toklas

Buy I Love You, Alice B. Toklas now from Amazon

First, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the movie. And once you've experienced the movie, tell everyone what you thought about it.

Wikipedia article




'I Love You, Alice B. Toklas' is a 1968 American romantic comedy film directed by Hy Averback and starring Peter Sellers. The film is set in the counterculture of the 1960s. The cast includes Joyce Van Patten, David Arkin, Jo Van Fleet, Leigh Taylor-Young (in her film debut) and a cameo by the script's co-writer Paul Mazursky. The title refers to writer Alice B. Toklas, whose 1954 autobiographical cookbook had a recipe for cannabis brownies. The film's eponymous theme song was performed by sunshine pop group Harpers Bizarre.

Plot



Attorney Harold Fine is cornered into setting a date for marriage by his secretary/fiance, Joyce. Because of a fender bender, he ends up driving a hippie vehicle, a psychedelically painted station wagon. When taking his hippie brother, Herbie, to the funeral of his family's butcher he encounters Nancy, Herbie's girlfriend, an attractive, free-spirited, barefoot flower power lady. She takes a liking to Harold and after they spend a night together in his home makes him pot brownies. However, she departs without telling him about its special ingredient, and not knowing what they are he eats them and feeds them to his father, mother, and fiance, who dissolve in laughter and silliness. Harold considers the "trip" a revelation, and begins renouncing aspects of his "straight" life. He leaves his fiance at the chuppah moments before they are to be married, starts living with Nancy, and tries to find himself with the aid of a guru. Ultimately he discovers the hippie lifestyle is as unfulfilling and unsatisfying as his old lifestyleNancy says that monogamy "isn't hip"and once more decides to marry Joyce. At the last minute, he again leaves her at the altar and runs out of the wedding onto a city street saying he doesn't know for sure what he is looking for but, "there's got to be something beautiful out there."

Cast



* Peter Sellers as Harold Fine

* Jo Van Fleet as Mrs. Fine

* Leigh Taylor-Young as Nancy

* Joyce Van Patten as Joyce

* David Arkin as Herbie Fine

* Herb Edelman as Murray

* Salem Ludwig as Mr. Fine

* Louis Gottlieb as guru

* Grady Sutton as funeral director

* Janet Clark as Mrs. Foley

* Jorge Moreno as Mr. Rodriguez

* Ed Peck as man in dress shop

Critical response



On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 14%, based on 7 reviews, with an average rating of 4.50/10.

Vincent Canby of 'The New York Times' called it "a very derivative comedy", with Peter Sellers "sometimes funny (as he tries to spread love among the police) but quite often grotesque (in some embarrassingly intimate bed scenes)." 'Variety' was more positive: "Film blasts off into orbit via top-notch acting and direction. Sellers' performance both in scenes which spotlight his character as well as ensemble sequences in which everyone is balanced nicely is an outstanding blend of warmth, sensitivity, disillusion and optimism"; Roger Ebert found some of the movie "good and pretty close to the mark, and Sellers is very funny," he disliked the film's stereotyped view of hippiedom, concluding, "If they'd dropped Sellers into a real hippie culture, we might really have had a movie here."

Home media



'I Love You, Alice B. Toklas' was released by Warner Home Video on June 20, 2006, as a Region 1 widescreen DVD and years later in 2014 as a DVD-on-demand title via Warner Archive.

See also



* List of American films of 1968

* List of films featuring hallucinogens

References




Buy I Love You, Alice B. Toklas now from Amazon

<-- Return to movies from 1968



This work is released under CC-BY-SA. Some or all of this content attributed to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1110064433.