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

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Saw this in the 1970's on New Zealand television. Lot's of pot smoking without negative consequences, drugs are depicted as mind expanding, women are sexually liberated, promiscuity is seen as kind and giving, people love with their arms wide open, and the institution of marriage gives rise to interval training (Run! Run!). There is Jewish mum NOT always acting like a stereotype. The man of his time is frequently confused by his sexist paradigms being rejected without argument, and his new friends responding firmly but with sympathy.The colours, clothes, one-liners, dialogue, and place (New York in 1968!) makes it worth seeing. I still remember the theme song.Now, this movie is probably sexist and embodies stereotypes that I was not able to identify at 7-10 yrs old. It seemed ahead of it's time. How does it compare to now? The cutting edge in 1968 was still ahead of the average now. Sexual liberation came early to intellectual artists in Paris (De Beauviore, and that guy she kicked about with for sex, what's his name?) and newly freed slaves under oppression often deadly in America's deep south, read Bessie Smith. Both ladies were what Jimi Hendrix lovingly called "experienced". So, let's see how far we've come: how does this movie do against modern prejudices against: women, sexual liberation, drug us, long hair and the sexual liberation of middle aged mothers?

There was box office in capitalizing on, and for some, touting, the growing California counterculture in this other films. Not a bad trip yet was likely on their radar. The 'Hollywood' not involved in the mess of "Skidoo" or the heady "Head" made around the same time, went for a a trip presented as a more accessible and intimate story and got themselves a more 'important' actor in Peter Sellers for '...Toklas'.This is a must-see anyway; well-crafted and I like the bit of a look at period Los Angeles. The smugness and progressive's way of dissing the "square" middle-class using the movie amongst others to give them the finger makes it difficult to enjoy the parts they intend as humor. I enjoy Sellers so much more another 1968 film "The Party" an affectionate, goof, warm-satirical look at their own fabu crowd up in the 'hills'.

With a strange title, but a memorable title song, this film is meant to be a satire on the hippie era and emancipating oneself. It is popular among those who were around in the 1960s, but is questionable whether the film will amuse other audiences. It is not very funny, with jokes that are more so absent than lame, a rather dull story, and really not very much to it at all. As usual, Peter Sellers brings some sparks to the material; the rest of the cast do very little with their roles, and some verge on being over-the-top. The film deserves credit for the title song, Seller's performance, and perhaps providing a snapshot of an era long past. It is not a particularly good film though. Hy Averback would have more success later on, directing episodes of the TV series 'M*A*S*H'.

I don't feel like I can rate this movie much higher than 7, although I did rather enjoy it. It began slow, but once Sellers meets his female match in Nancy's character, things start to move. I was personally a fan of all the "inadvertent" troubles Sellers's character kept getting into once he picked up the new psychedelic car, and how he was getting beaten down by all of the things in his own life. I'm sure that, at the time, the scene with the "groovy" brownies was quite new and perhaps had not been seen at all on TV or in movies, but it seems pretty predictable now (particularly with its use in "That 70s Show" and Never Been Kissed). The best thing about it is that it seems to provide a pretty good snapshot of the late 60s, from which my own remembrances of the era are in the form of not being born until 7 years after this movie was made.