Alice's Restaurant (1969)

Inspired by the 18 minute song by Arlo Guthrie, Alice's Restaurant is a meandering piece of hippie Americana that I cannot, in my right mind, recommend to general audiences or cinephiles. This is a true niche film that celebrates a generation. Alice's Restaurant, for the uninitiated, is the story of Arlo and his unorthodox way of avoiding the Vietnam War draft.

The film unfolds as a seemingly random series of events. Here's the gist. Long-haired hippie Arlo visits Alice for Thanksgiving. As a favor, he takes a VW Microbus full of trash to the local dump which happens to be closed for the holiday. In turn, he finds a ravine (already filled with rubbish) and tosses it all there. Paraded about as the scourge of society, Arlo's littering charge leads him to be declared 'unfit for service'.

Arlo Guthrie narrates the very embodiment of a generation. When viewed in context, Alice's Restaurant is very much a socio-political statement from a generation filled with hope for a better tomorrow. But if viewed otherwise, the film is tired, dated, and downright slumber-inducing.

As I see it, Alice's Restaurant is better known as a song, not a movie. But the film could easily stand alongside Easy Rider as a voice for a generation.