The Sterile Cuckoo (1969)

This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

Powerful

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

In your good review of The Sterile Cuckoo your remark that Liza's mom didn't perform as real or sensitive or genuine in all of her movies. Yes, most would agree since Judy Garland's film roles centered mostly on what Judy did best - "entertaining." Other than her heart-wrenching testimony on the witness stand in Judgment at Nuremberg or trying to help a mentally retarded young man in A Child Is Waiting, in I Could Go On Singing was a showcase for Judy, both as actress and as a performer, (her scenes at the Palladium were probably as close as the movies ever get to capturing her on-stage persona), she's exhilarating and incredibly moving. And trying to reconnect with her young son left with her ex-husband is truly special. When she gets around to her drunken 'I can't be spread so thin' speech all traces of the character have been wiped clean and it's Judy, raw and emotional, on screen. This was her final film, and you can say she went out on a high.

I saw this movie so many years ago when it was first released with a great deal of fanfare featuring Liza Minnelli's virtuosic portrayal of a heartbreakingly lonely, vulnerable and impossible young coed. Seeing it again, some 30 years later, it continues to resonate with its beautifully drawn characters and their painfully real relationships. Love, desire, passion, confusion, post-adolescent yearnings- -these strong emotions and feelings are present in every scene of this film which has not aged one single bit in those 30 years. This movie is a gem.

Not the kind of movie a male teen {13} would go see, much less really enjoy. I think it was the second or b movie of that 1969 Saturday matinee. The theme has a special catchy quality about it, like Lizas character, I found it very enjoyable, with eccentric humor & sadness all working in a well balanced entertaining film.

Liza Minelli plays neurotic "Pookie" who falls in love with a conservative, bookish college freshmen whom she meets riding a bus. And how neurotic (and irritating) she is!! Her schtick is to act out outrageous pranks in order to grab his attention (like sitting cross-legged on his roof). The theme to the movie, "Come Saturday Morning", sung by the Sandpipers on massive doses of seconal, plays repetitively in the background of this movie. Liza is an overbearing misfit, who clings to her serious, no-nonsense boyfriend like the lingering smell of nauseating incense after it has been burning in a room. In a long and painful monologue over the phone-- a tour-de-force for Liza Minelli--she begs him to let her come and spend time with him alone in his college dorm room. Boyfriend Burton is the "strong, silent type."When she shows up, her boyfriend totally ignores her and instead they spend the days in nerve wracking silence. One is therefore led to believe that Burton the boyfriend felt compelled out of sympathy and compassion to let her stay. Poor Pookie--she plays every trick in the book to grab his attention but to no avail. While he studies, she asks him--suggestively--if he "wants to peel a tomatoe?" She serves him lunch and pours him soda out of a bottle with a three foot long neck. She has masking tape over her mouth(get the picture?). To the viewer, this either creates sympathy for her character or you find her pranks irritating--why doesn't she just go away and leave him alone so he can study? You never really know if her schtick irritates or amuses him, or if he just stoically accepts it. In as much as they don't seem to really "connect"--(or really communicate well, is what the director is trying to convey here) he suggests that they spend some time apart, oh, say three months-- before they contact each other again. She agrees, one assumes--because she doesn't protest; she just nods and drives off. When she drives off in her Volkswagen, the viewing audience can't help but breathe a sigh of relief. (Gee, is this called letting someone down "gently"?) One would naturally expect this to be the logical "ending" to this movie, (Sandpiper's theme playing in the background) but it isn't. Inexplicably, Burton's character spends the rest of the picture trying to locate her! After the complete lack of chemistry between the two, one has to wonder: "why would he want to?" Perhaps Pookie's kind of like someone who hangs around and you take for granted, and then, when they're gone, you finally notice them missing, or begin to miss them, anyways. Or maybe he needs someone to cook and wash his clothes for him while he studies.