Getting Straight

GETTING STRAIGHT IN A TWIST 'N TURN WORLD
Don't let anybody else's review of this fool you. First of all, it's NOT THAT DATED. Secondly, after not seeing this movie since it came out in 1970, I was able to view it with the eyes of an adult instead of a 14 year old young girl.
I first saw this movie in the Summer of 1970, at a Drive-In Theatre with my parents. We went to the Drive-Ins every Saturday in the Summers. This was when they showed first run movies that were popular and had quality. (of course they showed all the other stuff too)
But there was something about GETTING STRAIGHT that has haunted me since 1970. The movie has always been in the back of my mind, so I finally got straight myself, and purchased a copy. And here goes.....

This movie should have been nominated for some Academy Awards back then. It is a terrific movie, directed by Richard Rush, who made another favorite of mine.... "PSYCH-OUT". But that's another review. Elliott Gould was at the top of his game at the time this movie was...

When you say it's dated...
...you fail to realize that, to the extent that you are conveying anything meaningful at all, you are paying it a compliment.

The film captures, as well as any film I've ever seen, the disintegration and the insanity of its specific moment. Compare Richard Rush's visceral staging of the campus riots here to any fictional or documentary footage you've run across; even "Medium Cool", the legendary fiction-doc hybrid, comes up feeling distant and tentative. If "Getting Straight" were not so steeped in sweat, incense and tear gas; if it didn't fill the viewer with the dread and danger of the social rift it depicts; if it were lazy, unfocused, generalized, no one would think to apply the term "dated".

The film was not just released in 1970. It is 1970.

Of course it's dated.

It's possible that your use of the term is meant to imply that the film is dumb or corny, but if it were either of these things, it would have been dumb and corny on the...

A timeless movie about a strange time
For anyone who has wondered how the 60's turned into the 70's this movie should be the answer. Getting Straight personaifies the transition from extreme activist to pratical adult in Gould's character. This movie is a must for any college student annoyed with what seems to be pointless protests to stupid issues like dorm hours.

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