The Young Graduates - 1971

Here's a movie that in some ways reminds me of Katherine.  Basically this is Katherine-lite, it's not as interesting, well shot, and it's definitely a lot more of a mess.  Although, this did come before Katherine, so ehh?  I had a bit of a 70's boxset marathon!  Fucking finally.  The Young Graduates rounds it out.

Mindy is a pretty normal 70's high school girl.  She lives with her parents, she's casually dating her guy Bill, and she's got a thing for her teacher Mr. Thompson.  She's 17, and waiting until her 18th birthday to have sex, much to the dismay of Bill.  However on her birthday night, she invites Mr. Thompson out, and the two of them end up having sex at a party.  Thompson becomes infatuated with her, Bill feels cut out, and this prompts Mindy to want to escape from it all, which she does with her friend Gretchen.

The rest of the film, we follow the two girls as they have various travels, problematic or not, on the road.  They don't have much money, but they meet up with people who are sometimes helpful, sometimes out for themselves.  Mindy and Gretchen are trying to get to Big Sur, CA.  Eventually Thompson and Bill and another dude unite and begin to track the girls, following the clues they leave.

Spoilers for the rest of this review.  Beware.  The girls are heading to Big Sur with their hippie friend Pan.  They get a ride with some bikers eventually, and bikers decide to try and rape the girls.  They beat up Pan, and the girls are drugged, but manage to escape.  They ride the bikes to Big Sur, where they find some hippie hangout, but then the cops bust it and arrest the leader, and the girls adventure is then just sort of over?  Huh?!

This movie felt like a big cop out, because like I said, in the end, nothing fucking happens?  This whole thing leads to NOWHERE.  Also, they almost get raped, they get drugged, they get abused, they get their friend beat up, they experiment, and I guess the whole point is to watch the journey and not where the journey goes, but NONE of this effects them at all.  They have a "whatever" disposition that never fades, and even after almost getting raped, they just shrug it off and keep going.

This movie is not trying to say anything bad, or good, it seems about the 70's culture.  For a movie that has a tagline "A report card on the Love Generation," what is the message?  What does the fucking report card say??  Everything is fine, nothing matters, go ahead, but also it's kinda pointless and fruitless?  So what is that like a straight C?  Maybe a C-?

There is some nudity, there is some okay music.  There are plenty of things that are bland and boring, shots of inane things taking place that will make you yell at the stupidity of them, if you're anything like me.  I didn't hate this when I watched it, but my hatred for this has since grown.  It's completely POINTLESS to watch this movie.  Literally nothing happens.

I do want to mention, Mindy bangs her teacher Thompson.  Then later they're watching a sex ed video in class and I said aloud "if this movie is about her getting pregnant, I'm going to be really mad".  Later she says to Thompson "I might be pregnant" and that plotline is dangled... But then, it's completely dropped and never mentioned again.  So...  Was she pregnant?  Does it matter?  Does ANYTHING in this fucking movie matter?!  The answer: NO.

Side note, I did the standard amount of research on the director, and I found another one of his movies.  I love the IMDb keywords list here, it's just hilarious: