Hair is many
things, but it is not easily classifiable. Like the titular human head dressing, the movie
is a bit long and not always beautiful. But it does have a certain, strange enjoyability
to it that you might or might not feel.
Here's the yardstick: my best friend introduced me to this movie, and she is not easily classifiable herself. We were having a bit of a post-Bob Dylan concert movie marathon on my living room floor and Hair was her entry into the festivities. My entry was Darkman. We're two very strange and different people. Which is probably why we love each other. But that's way off topic and has absolutely no place here. (Side note: If you lay on my floor, stare up at the TV, and tilt your head just right, then you can pretend your in a theater...only without the sticky floor, cell phone noise, or the laser pointers. You still get a crick in your neck, but nothing's perfect.)
Anyway, Hair. Directed by Milos (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) Forman (and that was just my first surprise) and based on the musical by Gerome Ragni (no surprises here as I didn't know who the hell that was). And we all know how much I love musicals, don't we? Needless to say, I was a bit apprehensive. I know from personal experience there's no better way to insult someone then to diss their favorite movie (unless you can think up a string of really good Yo Mama jokes on the spot, but, well, I can't) and I really didn't want to spoil the night by spouting my mouth off and putting down my friend's favorite movie.
We open at a bus stop in Oklahoma and follow Claude (John Savage) as he boards his bus and moves off to the Big City. Claude's been drafted and Uncle Sam wants him to report for duty. Through the magic of jump cutting, Claude winds up in Central Park, trying to impress a rich chica named Sheila (Beverly D'Angelo) with his equine skills. He fails.
But, not to worry. In failing, he manages to hook up with a gang of hash smoking hippies. They get him high and give him a taste of the hippie life style (which, according to this movie, consists of getting high and dancing around the street).
After waking up in Columbus Circle the next day, Claude bids farewell to his hippie friends...or tires to. As he walks across the Circle, Berger (Treat Williams), the leader of the tribe, spots Sheila 's picture in the paper. Seems her daddy is throwing a party and wouldn't it be fun to crash? The reluctant Claude follows along...and winds up in jail for his troubles.
Over the next half hour, Claude, Berger, and the tribe go through similar adventures (skinny dipping in Central Park's pond, appearing in one of Claude's hallucinations, trying to get Sheila to give Claude the nook) until, unfortunately, Claude must report for duty. Berger's tribe is unable to talk any sense into the boy, so off he goes.
At this point I was, like, Aww, man, this is exactly why I don't watch musicals. Look at this stuff. Hippies don't dance like they're on Broadway...and you can't dance like that on Hash no matter how black you are. Why the hell did Gerome Ragni take a page from Disney's playbook? And who's the screenwriter here? Feels like he's left some big chunks out of the story. Did he watch the damn play, or was he smoking Hash, too?
Of course, my friend was sitting right next to me, so I kept most of these thoughts to myself.
No, you tell her. You can tell her all you want. Me, I know how hard she can punch if she feels like it.
In retrospect, I'm glad I held my tongue. Because at the halfway mark, Hair suddenly turns into an actual drama. Now, before this, it'd gone out of it's way to portray the downside of being a hippie in New York (sleeping on dirty streets, pissing off of landmarks, being deadass broke, etc.) but that drama doesn't hit very hard when said hippies break into song and dance every few minutes. What happens to all involved (particularly Berger) after Claude leaves does hit hard and the surprise it packs pulled this movie back from the brink.
I've said it before: I don't like musicals, and for the "Why?" look no further than Hair. My most nitpicky (some might call it "pedantic") complaint comes from my belief that no one on Earth would dance around like this. (People in Broadway might, but Broadway isn't even close to Earth). Plus, no one on Earth would sing like this. But, if they must sing, could they please sing songs that advance the plot instead of killing it?
All of which is your standard bullshit. (Or not so standard, as most critics seem to embrace musicals whole-heartedly. To those people I say: Pray you aren't around when I finally force myself to watch Grease.) And with all that firmly in mind, I was prepared to rip the crap out of this movie...until the second half began.
Now comes the dilemma: I can't properly review this movie without giving away the second half but, if I do that, then why in God's name would you want to rent this flick? If there's one thing I despise, it's an asshole who gives away the ending. So, let me just say that something surprising and unexpected happens during the movie's second half. Something so surprising it's almost out of character with the rest of the flick...which is probably why it grabs you. Put simply: the movie stops dancing around and gets down the business.
While no one in the movie is (er, was) Oscar bound, Savage and Williams make a good cinematic Odd Couple, with Savage spending half the movie perpetually shocked by Berger's antics, or stoned out of his mind. Props also go out to Dorsey Wright, who plays Hud, the Token Black Dude of Berger's tribe. And while "TBD" is usually a disparaging term, Dorsey Wright does good things with Hud by virtue of the fact that Michael Weller's script gives him a past.
In
fact, Weller's script goes out of its way to portray these hippies as humans. The movie's
at its best when it explores the lives these characters left to live on the streets. Also,
while every other movie of the time was painting a picture of the Happy Scrappy Flower
Children, Hair doesn't bother hiding the unglamorous side of being a New York
hippie. Because, let's face it, living on the streets sucks ass.
While it's not the type of musical I could watch every day (it's no Little Shop of Horrors; that's for damn sure), Hair is a positive roll model for all the other musicals in the class. They'd do well to learn from this little Milos Forman picture. I know I learned something.
And here it is, the final piece of wisdom Hair imparted unto me: If you're a rhythm challenged white boy, hashish will not improve matters at all.
