Hair

1979 hippie musical

Rating: 11/20

Plot: A guy's joining the army, but once he reaches New York, some singing hippies get in the way.

Currently, I'm researching the year 1979 in film. I saw this was available to stream; discovered that it was the next movie Milos Forman directed after One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, one of my personal favorites; and remembering seeing it in high school and thinking it was something special.

It's not. It doesn't quite work as a musical, it doesn't work as a narrative, and it doesn't work as any sort of belated counterculture statement. It's a mess of a musical, and there's nothing about the story or the characters that makes them feel authentic or interesting. I'm fairly sure that I'm supposed to side with the hippie characters in this, but I was never given a reason to. Maybe that's just the old-man part of me talking. You know, the only part of me. I didn't buy the fragments of romance this halfheartedly developed, a sketchy love-triangular conflict didn't work, and any internal conflict with the main character is never fully realized. Of course, any problems with the Claude Hooper Bukowski character might be the result of John Savage having only 1 and 1/2 facial expressions.

The songs really aren't that effective. And there's a barrage of songs! They all kind of blend in with one another so that at times, I'm not sure if I'm hearing something that's a throwback to an earlier scene or something that just sounds the same as something I've heard before because writers Galt MacDermot, Gerome Ragni, and James Rado don't have much versatility. I probably shouldn't blame MacDermot because the music isn't the issue. Rado and Ragni were the lyricists, and those just sound like words that have just been thrown together. I can imagine song-writing sessions working like this:

Rado: "Hey, I'm working on that drug song. I'm just going to look in the encyclopedia and write down all the drugs that I find in there."
Ragni: "Good idea! For that song they'll do while on horseback, I'm going to just string together a bunch of words, too."
Rado: "Like sodomy?"
Ragni: "Exactly! I'm going to start with that one! Thanks, Ragni!"
Rado: "You're welcome, buddy. But I'm Rado. You're Ragni."

Here are the lyrics, in case you think I'm exaggerating:

"Sodomy
Fellatio
Cunnilingus
Pederasty

Father, why do these words sound so nasty?

Masturbation
Can be fun
Join the holy orgy
Kama Sutra
Everyone!"

That could have been written by a kid who got his hands on his parents' dirty magnetic poetry kit! And pederasty? Really, Hair?

The performance pieces, largely lip synched, do have an infectious energy, and scenes in Washington D.C. and Central Park have an impressive amount of extras. Also--there's a brief shot during a song about "Electric Blues" with this guy playing a keytar that spits out fire. I needed more of that guy! And that guy should have a guitar-off with that flaming-guitar guy from Fury Road.

I'm curious about what this wants to say about race. There's interracial relationships, and a whole song about black boys and white boys being pretty or something like that. What's the angle there, Hair?