That is one bitchin' ride, man.
Plot summary (with spoilers): So yeah. This is the movie that inspired Happy Days, the show everyone in my generation watched and loved until Ted McGinley showed up.
The year is 1962. Four friends have just graduated high school and are going out for one last night on the town before real life intrudes. There's Steve (aka Richie Cunningham himself, Ron Howard, severely testing my theory that all ginger dudes are inherently hot), Curt (nerdy, overweight Richard Dreyfuss who looks crazy young and yet will play a grown up scientist just two years later in Jaws, I'm interested in seeing how that works), Terry (that ugly old guy "Charles Martin Smith" who's in every third movie playing ugly old guys, google him), and John (guy I've never seen before who's playing a proto-Fonzie character).
At the start, Steve and Curt discuss the fact that they're both leaving for college the next day while the other two are staying behind. But Curt hedges a bit and says he might not be going, after all. He wants to stay in town and go to Junior college. Oh, Curt. Don't do it, buddy. I know whereof I speak. Steve doesn't want to hear that nonsense and insists that they're going to college together tomorrow, dammit.
Steve announces to Terry that he's going to let him borrow his car while he's away at college, which is pretty generous, and Terry immediately wants to take it for a spin. He drives off. Then John drives off in his spectacular yellow car (I don't know car names) that's in the pic above. I guess these friends aren't terribly interested in hanging out on their final night together. Then Steve meets up with his girlfriend Laurie (Cindy Williams, aka Laverne and Shirley's Laverne or Shirley, whichever is the dark-haired one) and tells her quite reasonably that he still wants to go steady with her, but would like to take a break while he's 3,000 miles away at school, and see other people. Laurie chokes this down and pretends very hard to be okay with it.
Then, everybody goes "cruising". By which I mean, they drive their gorgeous boat cars up and down the road over and over again and have conversations with drivers in other cars when they're stopped at traffic lights, like they're at a bar or something. Thanks for destroying the ozone, dicks.
Curt is riding with Steve and Laurie and he sees a beautiful blond woman (The Thighmaster Suzanne Somers) in another car smile at him and mouth something. He rolls down his window and says "what?!", but the light turns and she goes around the corner. Curt begs Steve to follow her, but he refuses, so Curt gets out of the car to try to find her on foot.
From this point on, all four guys are basically separate for most of the movie with their own storylines that are intercut with each other, but I'm just gonna tell each one separately.
John sees a car full of girls at a light and starts hitting on one of them, and then asks her to get in his car. The girl refuses, and so he asks if anyone in the car would like to join him. "Well, my sister would". "Great! Your sister, your mother, whatever". Way to play it cool, John. So, someone in the back of the car who John can't even see gets out of the car and gets into John's It's like internet chatting. Turns out the someone is a 12 year old girl, which makes it even more like internet chatting. John tries to get her to leave, but her sister has already taken off. The girl (Carol) says she's real mature for her age and wants to make time with a boy. John is rude to her at first, but then defends her when another guy in another car says something mean to her. Then some girls in another car throws a water balloon at John, but he ducks and it hits Carol. They laugh at this, then get out of the car and spray the girls' car with shaving cream. It's wacky and they bond. John tries to trick Carol into saying where she lives, but she insists that she wants to stay out all night until she finds a man. So he calls her bluff and starts uncomfortably and hilariously trying to hit on her, and she immediately spills her address. When he drops her off, he kisses her on the cheek and it's quite sweet.
Terry drives Steve's car around until he meets a girl named Debbie who's impressed enough to get in. She wants alcohol, so he goes to a liquor store and does the "I lost my ID" thing which doesn't work with the clerk, so he stands outside the store and asks an old man to buy some booze for him. The old man takes the money, buys some wine, and then disappears out the back door. Heh. Terry borrows more money from Debbie and then asks someone else to get him some liquor. The guy says yes, then disappears inside for a bit. The camera stays on Terry, then suddenly the guy races out with a paper bag with a bottle of booze, throws it at Terry, and then runs away, immediately followed by the clerk who has a gun and shoots at him several times. WTF. Seriously, what just happened? Anyone seen this movie? The guy apparently ran out without paying, I guess? And gave the booze to Terry anyway? He put his life at risk to get some stranger booze, and got nothing out of it but the cost of the bottle? This does not make sense at all.
Anyway, they go to Makeout Hill or whatever, drink a little, then decide to go off into the bushes to have sex instead of the back of the car like proper folk, and by the time they get back, the car is stolen.
Steve and Laurie go to a dance where Laurie starts crying and Steve feels bad and says he no longer wants to see other people and promises to pretend to be monogamous while away at college. A teacher at the dance warns them to stop dancing so close together and Steve triumphantly tells him to "kiss a duck" because he's graduated already. I say we bring back "kiss a duck". That is some seriously hardcore shit. But then Steve and Laurie go to a diner and break up again and then make up again while driving away and then break up again at Makeout Hill and Laurie winds up kicking Steve out of her car and driving off, leaving him. He stumbles upon Terry and Debbie and they all walk back into town.
Curt goes on his search for the hot blond, and sits on a car that belongs to some greasers who are in a gang called "The Pharaohs" where they wear matching jackets with their gang name on them, just like the Bloods and Crips do. The Pharaohs make Curt go with them and force him under the threat of violence steal quarters from a pinball machine and then later to tie a chain to a police car which causes the rear axle to come off. The Pharaohs are impressed with Curt's abilities and try to make him join their knockoff bullshit Disney gang. He politely promises to think about it. He then goes to the local DJ, Wolfmann Jack, and begs him to read a note on the air, asking the mystery blond woman to meet him at the local burger joint in an hour. While there, Curt sits in his car and suddenly this phone that's attached by a long wire to this giant box starts to ring. Curt walks up to the giant box and answers the phone, even though it's obviously not his cell. Weird. The person on the phone claims to be the blond, and says she'll meet with him the next day, but Curt says he'll be gone off to college the next day. Aw. Go, Curt!
Steve, Terry, and Debbie get back into town and Steve goes off on his own. Terry and Debbie find Steve's car parked at the burger joint and try to steal it back. The thieves catch them and start beating the tar out of Terry. John drives by at that point and fights both of them off. Then Steve learns from some kids in the diner that Laurie has gone off with Harrison Ford, who is a drag racer who has spent the movie trying to find and challenge drag-racing champion John to a race. Everyone rushes off to find Laurie, who they all agree should under no circumstances be around Harrison Ford. They find them outside of town on a long strip of road. Harrison Ford challenges John to a race, and John agrees. Steve begs Laurie to get out of the car first, but she won't. Terry says "Go!" and they peel out. Harrison Ford is barely pulling ahead when his tire blows and he goes flying off the road and flips upside down. Everyone runs over and bizarrely, Laurie and Harrison Ford are already out of the car, barely even injured. I guess seat belts are for suckers. Steve pulls Laurie away from the car and John helps Harrison Ford and the car blows up.
The next morning. Everyone's at the airport to see Curt off to college. But Steve isn't going, because Steve is again back with Laurie and has decided to ruin his life for the chance to knock her up and never amount to anything.
Curt disappears onto the plane and everyone watches it take off. The most depressing title cards ever tell us that John was killed by a drunk driver two years later, and Terry went MIA in Vietnam, and Steve is single and an insurance agent and Curt is a writer in Canada. The End.
Review: I think this movie invented the "high school kids celebrate their last night of childhood" genre of teen movies, and it's probably the best of that sad little genre. The individual stories were nice, some better than others, and Richard Dreyfuss stuck out in particular as a very likable and interesting character and he definitely had the most interesting arc. I'm not sure what it added up to though, besides a mildly interesting character study. I mean, Robert Altman does this stuff much better, and spices up the boring parts with Julianne Moore's crotch. There's not much really wrong with it (apart from the stupid title cards) I laughed, I cared, but not a lot. I think this is a movie for a specific group of people, namely who were in high school in the 60's and actually cruised around in those boats. On that level, it's no doubt a very compelling time capsule, but for the rest of us...eh. A truly great movie puts you "there", no matter how alien that world is to you in reality. Earlier AFI entries come to mind: The Last Picture Show, The Shawshank Redemption, In the Heat of the Night, Pulp Fiction. This one kept me at an arm's length. I know this is the movie that inspired George Lucas to cast Harrison Ford as Han and later Indy, so if nothing else, that's pretty great. Also, if there were no Graffiti, there would be no Happy Days and quite possibly no Ron Howard the director. Which would mean that Clint Howard would be under a bridge somewhere, trying to steal your firstborn son unless you give him gold.
So, there's more pluses than minuses, is what I'm saying.
Stars: Three out of five.
Next, "Sullivan's Travels" (?), and then...oh god. "Duck Soup".
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