MORE AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1979)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
Making a sequel to "American Graffiti" may be a ballsy move, but it doesn't mean
it is a necessary move. George Lucas served as executive producer for the 1979
sequel, titled "More American Graffiti," and a largely unknown director, B.W.L.
Norton, took over as writer and director. Ballsy, indeed.
The film starts off with a bang when we hear Martha Reeves and the Vandellas belting the song "Love is Like a 'Heatwave'" as we see helicopters hovering over the countryside in Vietnam. Then we are treated to individual vignettes, all set on New Year's Eve from 1964 to 1967. We see John Milner (Paul LeMat) as a professional dragstrip racer who is trying to date a Swedish girl, yet she barely speaks any English. Then we see an older, more mature Steve (Ron Howard), now an insurance agent, and Laurie (Cindy Williams), the unhappy housewife who just wants to work. There is also Teddy (Charles Martin Smith), the nerd from back home who is now fighting the Vietcong in good old Vietnam. He is haplessly trying to injure himself so he can go back home to his girlfriend, Debbie (Candy Clark). Some of these scenes are funny and recall moments from "M.A.S.H." Speaking of Debbie, she is seen cavorting with the hippies in another vignette where she bails out her stoned boyfriend who only thinks of getting his next hit of acid. And did I see Mackenzie Philips playing two different roles?
As I said, the film starts out with a bang, showing situations with humor and pungent wit to spare. But after a while, the whole film becomes rather repetitive. You can only watch so many scenes of John Milner trying to woo a girl or fix his car before a race. Candy Clark is hardly believable as a hippie, and her scenes with Scott Glenn as a musician from a band called "Electric Haze" reek of complete embarrassment. Even sometimes reliable Cindy Williams is saddled with a tired bit about her revolutionary brother burning his draft card and getting arrested by cops in what looks like a re-enactment of the tragic Kent State University incident in 1971! The staging of this event is flat with no emotion whatsoever. Only scenes involving Teddy's plight in Vietnam are stirring and involving, if only because Charles Martin Smith is the only actor who seems alive and kicking. Though the film has an inventive method of showing different film stocks and aspect ratios of each vignette (a technique unusual in 1979 whereas today, it has become du jour), it only serves to distance us from the characters. Only Robert Altman can sway from one vignette to another with the ease and flow of a real magician, and still show he cares about his characters. B.W.L. Norton is no Altman.
"American Graffiti" is a rock and roll pop classic that evoked a time and place in history with warmth, genial humor and understated emotions - it is one of George Lucas's finest achievements. "More American Graffiti" is not exactly more of the same.
Footnote: Look quickly for Harrison Ford as Bob Falfa, a patrolman, and Delroy Lindo as an Army Sergeant.
