American Graffiti

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Movie Details

• Genre: Comedy, Drama
• Release Date: 1973-01-01 n/a
• Running Time: 110 min.
• Director: George Lucas
• Cast: Richard Dreyfuss, Ronny Howard, Paul Le Mat, Charles Martin Smith, Cindy Williams, Candy Clark, Mackenzie Phillips, Wolfman Jack, Bo Hopkins, Manuel Padilla Jr.
• Producer: Francis Ford Coppola
• Writer: Gloria Katz, George Lucas
• Distributor: Universal Pictures
• Official Site: American Graffiti Official Site

It's right about here that the New Hollywood starts to go wrong. Not that this George Lucas film is bad or anything--it just enabled a lot of bad films to get made. Hot-waxing our culture of accelerated nostalgia (this 1973 movie is about the bygone days of 1962) while fetishizing the pre-Vietnam U.S. as the site of "lost innocence," American Graffiti helped make possible everything from Happy Days to the abominable Forrest Gump. And yet it's still pretty damn fun to watch. Set on the night before two friends, Steve (Ron Howard) and Curt (Richard Dreyfuss), are supposed to leave their small California town for college, the film revels in their rock- and car-centric teen culture even as it senses that it has to end. Lucas's largely plotless structure mimics this aimless cruising, but the uniformly strong performances (by Dreyfuss, Cindy Williams, Mackenzie Phillips, Paul LeMat, Candy Clark, and others) keep the movie on the road. And it's hard to dislike a film that clearly inspired Dazed and Confused, Richard Linklater's somewhat similar (if less ahistorical) paean to youth culture. Graffiti's success, however, also enabled Lucas to make Star Wars, which drove the final nail into the coffin of 1970s American art cinema. Not that it's a bad movie or anything. (Derek Nystrom)