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Shampoo

Starring: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn, Lee Grant, Jack Warden
Director: Hal Ashby
Format: PAL
Released: 16 Feb 2004
RRP: £5.99
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Customer Reviews

Casanova as a harried Hollywood hairdresser - By: Dennis Littrell, 03 Jul 2007
Robert Towne, who has written a number of popular movies & at least one criticallly acclaimed one--Chinatown (1974)--and Warren Beatty wrote this satire of Hollywood. Beatty plays George Roundy, a not entirely bright but nimble hairdresser on a motorcycle who is much beloved & desired by woman. The women doing most of the desiring are Lee Grant (Felicia), Julie Christie (Jackie), & Goldie Hawn (Jill). Jack Warden plays Lester a successful investor who, to his chagrin & ultimate amusement, learns that his wife, his mistress, & his daughter Lorna (Carrie Fisher) are being bedded by the guy he thinks is gay. (Shades of the sham eunuch in the harem!)

This is a premise that many in the Hollywood Hills could not resist, the irony cutting so beautifully through the canyons & swimming pools & the lavish parties. Most of the action takes place on that November day in 1968 when Nixon & Agnew were swept into the White House by the "silent majority." Lester & his friends are quite pleased & are celebrating as the election returns come in. Meanwhile George is trying to raise money so he can open his own shop since he's got the "heads." Keeping the heads though turns out to be more than he can handle--and to be honest jumping from bed to bed several times a day with several different women might be too much for any man.

Will Georgie-Porgie, puddin' pie (who kissed the girls & made them cry) get the money for his shop & the girl he loves--and which girl is it, that he loves? Goldie Hawn wears a micro-mini (but there's no peeking!) & Julie Christie sports a short pony skirt with boots while Lee Grant has to play the eldest woman. Now, who gets George & would she reallly want him?

Some nice sixties/seventies Hollywood decadence graces the screen along with free love & don't bogart that number. In the background there are a lot of mug shots of Nixon & Agnew in juxtaposition as a kind of joke since the movie was made in 1975 not long after Watergate.

Beatty, playing a role said to be patterned after makeup artist Jay Sebring, is competent & wins our sympathy, maybe because we know he's never going to amount to much. Or does he? Lee Grant won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress, but to be honest I thought Julie Christie was better, although they both were good. Actors carried this with Warden & Hawn also putting in strong performances.

Shampoo is not so much funny as it is amusing. It's like a superior sit-com without the laugh track, but in no way is it a "defining" Hollywood film.

See this for Warren Beatty, one of the Hollywood royalty, brother of Shirley MacLaine & husband of Annette Bening.
Seminal Seventies example of New Hollywood. - By: Jason Parkes, 22 Jan 2002
'Shampoo' was directed by the late, great Hal Ashby in 1975 from a script written by Robert 'Chinatown' Towne & Warren Beatty (who would go on to co-write 'Reds', which he would also direct)...The film is located in 1968, set over the night of the election that would bring Richard Milhous Nixon to power. It is significant that Beatty wrote speeches/orated for Robert Kennedy. 1968- the year of the barricades, the continuing civil disorder, Vietnam, Woodstock, Altamont, Cielo Drive/Manson family; the end of the hippie dream. 'Easy Rider's final lines by Fonda & Hopper: "We blew it".

Nixon's election is the backdrop to the incestual, venal set of relationships between the characters here. This is an extension of the worlds found in 'Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice' & 'The Graduate'. The utopian possibilties of the Sixties 'counterculture' (Lester believes George is 'anti-establishment'). This is a precursor of Lawrence Kasdan's 'The Big Chill'- which presents the counterculture as reallly, when it comes down to it, just as corrupt as their previous generation. Coincidence that Ashby's film is at the centre of the American film renaissance of the Seventies, as captured in 'Easy Riders,Raging Bulls' (which refers to this film). The pursuit of hedonism, the "no regrets" George declares to Jill, is the moral abyss of cocaine & business interests & provides a potent alllegory for the corrupt nature of Nixon's Presidency. The Nixon themes are as potent as the Watergate backdrop in Ang Lee's 'The Ice Storm' (based on the Rick Moody novel)- which also paralllels the hedonism & moral-digressions at the heart of the American philosophy.

All this is of interest, but shouldn't get in the way of what is a highly amusing satire- with some great comic moments & lines. Beatty could very well be playing with his Lothario/Don Juan star quality (why is so little critical material written on him- when films like 'Bulworth', 'Heaven Can Wait', 'Bonnie & Clyde', 'Reds' & this are so subversive- in a leftist sense? Is it because he is not as heavy-handed as Oliver Stone?). Look at the weak drivel that passes as comedy these days, there are not films like this- 'Swingers' might be close- but is far too rose-tinted...

The soundtrack is fantastic, The Beatles publishers must have been more accesible in 1975- as we get 'Sgt Pepper' & 'Lucy in the Sky of Diamonds'- as well as Jimi's 'Manic Depression', Buffalo Springfield's 'Mr Soul' & The Beach Boys 'Wouldn't it Be Nice?' for the start/end credit sequences. This song captures the 'innocent' ideals of the Sixties, yet, when you see what happened to Brian Wilson- the dream has failed. As Neil Young sang in 1986: "the wooden ships are just a hippie dream".

It is also significant that Pope looks very similar to George. The performances are great, from a puppy-fat Carrie Fisher (who gets one of the best lines, but is nowhere near on-screen enough-a metaphor for her future career), to Jack Warden, to Julie Christie, to Lee Grant, to (even) Goldie Hawn (the hour or so of 'Bird on the Wire'I endured is still a painful memory).

Hal Ashby is the most unappreciated of New Hollywood directors- when he made such classic films as this, 'Harold & Maude', 'Coming Home' & 'Being There', you wonder why. This is a film that has guts & deserves to be seen by many in the future. A seminal Seventies film; the American dream as farce. Nixon's TV proclamation of "an open government"- one that will "bring the people together". Well, here's what happens when you bring the people together. Required viewing by anyone serious about cinema and/or contemporary existence!