I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! (1968)

This movie is by no means flawless, but I simply love it.

Harold Fine (Peter Sellers) is a successful button downed LA accident attorney living life by the numbers with a modicum of passion. Preparing listlessly to marry he runs across flower child Nancy (Leigh-Taylor Young)who offers him an alternative view as well as some mind altering weed brownies that in combination cause him to go Leary and drop out. Hooking up with Nancy they live in his car for awhile before getting a crash pad complete with hanger ons. While Harold is really tuned into Nancy he's turned off by the chaotic leisure and presence of the dead beats. Caught between two worlds, conflicted about where he belongs Harold seesaws with modern day existence.Alice falls somewhere between Reefer Madness and Up in Smoke with its comic exploration of the notorious herb. While it is free of the bug eyed crazies that populated Reefer its just as dishonest with the response by its cast of characters (freaks and straights of all ages) who manage to peak two bites in then go on an oh wow laughing jag for half a day. Made within a year of The Summer of Love and a year before Woodstock it is more a burlesque attempt for mass consumption that would later be more fully informed by the gravitas of Cheech and Chong. Quaint and broad as it may be it does re-classify pot however from the insane drug of Dragnet and Reefer Madness with the comic attitude taken towards Prohibition in silent and early sound films. Sellers rolls well with the fatuous script and Taylor-Young fills the hippie chic bill with ease but Jo Van Fleet as Harold's mother overacts outrageously along with a bit of feigned stoning by the rest of the cast that beats this labored idea into the ground in no time..

I saw this in '68 when I was about in the same place Harold Fine was, in his social development. I was already married and had kids though. At the time of its release this seemed like an important movie. It was funny and satiric but it ended in a positive note for someone ready to drop out. If we'd only known where that was going to lead, but it was fun for a time.I'm so glad I revisited this over 40 years later (yikes!!) Some of the film I remembered as if I saw it yesterday. Some scenes I had no recollection of. Peter Sellers is marvelous and the rest of the cast is fine. It is a time capsule of a film and really blends film styles. It has a definite TV flavor. Hy Averback mostly worked in TV so that's not a surprise. The film though, is authentic to the time and it was fun to watch for this old hippie.

" I LOve You Alice B. Toklas " is a 60s gem. Peter Sellers is out-standing as an uptight, highly successful, Jewish lawyer, engaged to be married, who falls in love with his hippie brother's hippie girl and "drops out". For those too young to remember the 60s this film will probably appear to be meaningless, but it's a classic example of what thousands of Americans went through during this revoltionary decade. The film however is stolen by the incredible beauty of Leigh Taylor-Young who was making her film debut. What a beauty! A real 10. Nothing fake about her. I recall seeing this movie when it first came out in 1968 when I was 10 years old. Everyone in the theater was rolling in the aisles with laughter. And every guy there had a "crush" on Leigh Taylor Young.So, turn on the lava-lamb, put on some love-beads, put some pillows on the floor, take off your shoes, and go back to time and enjoy this 1960s comedy classic.