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"You can't stay seventeen forever," George Lucas proves otherwise by domesticating Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop into a cozy nocturne. Modesto '62, dusk to dawn, youth's grace and its collapse. Facing the world outside of high school, jock (Ron Howard) and brain (Richard Dreyfuss) ponder their options. One cracks the heart of the Homecoming Queen (Cindy Williams) and the other is abducted by an aging greaser (Bo Hopkins), college "back East" awaits in the morning. "Why should I leave home to find a new home?" The dragster (Paul Le Mat) competes with a rival (Harrison Ford) while chaperoning cheeky jailbait (Mackenzie Phillips), the nerd (Charles Martin Smith) treats his date (Candy Clark) to cocktails of Coca-Cola and Old Harper in a borrowed Chevy. Motorized adolescence, up and down Main Street lubricated by a continuous jukebox flow. (It takes the silence of a makeout spot for one of the juveniles to realize his ride's been stolen: "The radio's gone!") Drive-ins, sock hops, arcade parlors, a Techniscope glow over all of it, even the junkyard is crammed with gleaming chrome. "Is that you in that beautiful car? Geez, what a waste of machinery." Demy's The Model Shop gets an Archie Comics makeover, the gloss on Fellini's I Vitelloni also has the dream blonde (Suzanne Somers) gliding in and out like the Muse in 8½. "Paradise Road" with the Kennedy assassination and Vietnam just around the corner, nostalgia for a time when a generation's biggest trauma was finding out that hootin', hollerin', howlin' Wolfman Jack was really a stack of studio tapes and melting popsicles, and for a time when Lucas took an interest in human characters. The sobering postscript yields to a blast of The Beach Boys, "won't be long til summer time is through..." Linklater offers the best recomposition (Dazed and Confused), Carpenter the best criticism (Christine). With Kathleen Quinlan, Manuel Padilla Jr., Timothy Crowley, Kay Lenz, Joe Spano, Jana Bellan, Lynne Marie Stewart, Beau Gentry, and Scott Beach.
--- Fernando F. Croce |