Getting Straight

Columbia. Director Richard Rush; Producer Richard Rush; Screenplay Robert Kaufman; Camera Laszlo Kovacs; Editor Maury Winetrobe; Music Ronald Stein; Art Director Sydney Z. Witwack

Elliott Gould
Candice Bergen
Robert F. Lyons
Jeff Corey
Max Julien
Cecil Kellaway

Getting Straight is an outstanding film. It is a comprehensive, cynical, sympathetic, flip, touching and hilarious story of the middle generation [of the late 1960s] - those millions a bit too old for protest, a bit too young for repression.

The setting is a college campus where Elliott Gould is nearly through an education course. Bergen is his girl. Both represent the post-JFK/RFK generation, who perceive the tremendous flaws in organized civilization, but scorn the often-puerile methods used in protest.

The episodic story [updated from a novel by Ken Kolb] covers lots of ground as it permits the very large and extremely competent supporting cast to limn the attitudes of an entire population.

While the film is a parade of accurately-hewn postures, the root story never strays too far.

(Color) Available on VHS. Extract of a review from 1970. Running time: 126 MIN.

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