Alice's Restaurant

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Alice's Restaurant

PG,

1969,

1h 51m,

Comedy/

Drama

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Watchlist

63%

19 Reviews

Tomatometer

59%

2,500+ Ratings

Popcornmeter

63%

Tomatometer

19 Reviews

59%

Popcornmeter

2,500+ Ratings

Arlo Guthrie plays himself in this film based on his song of the same name. After getting kicked out of college, Arlo decides to visit his friend Alice (Pat Quinn) for Thanksgiving dinner. After dinner is over, Arlo volunteers to take the trash to the dump, but finds it closed for the holiday, so he just dumps the trash in the bottom of a ravine. This simple act of littering gets him arrested, and sends him on a bizarre journey that ends with him in front of the draft board.

TIME Magazine

Nov 21, 2008

[Penn] has transformed a charming shaggy-dog story into a melancholy epitaph for an entire era.

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Nick Pinkerton

Village Voice

Nov 12, 2008

Penn's genius overtakes the dropout romance, like a final post-bacchanal hangover that suggests liberation as an El Dorado dream.

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Variety

May 30, 2008

There are occasional flashes of wry humor and some rib-tickling sequences. But they are all too few.

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Jacob Brackman

Esquire Magazine

Aug 13, 2020

At one end, I suppose, to judge Alice's a brilliantly inventive auteur vision: personal, topical, hilarious, deeply pessimistic... At the other, to judge Alice's a dog; a messy porridge. In the middle: reservations, fourteen-point check-list ratings.

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Paul Schrader

The Los Angeles Image

Jun 30, 2020

When a great director is given his freedom, the least we can expect is a great failure, with pretentiousness, banality, and brilliance all fighting for precedence. But the overriding failure of Alice's Restaurant is its lackluster quality.

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David Lamble

Bay Area Reporter

Jun 16, 2020

This immensely entertaining travesty gets so much wrong about a clan of rambunctious hippies raising hell in 1969 Stockbridge, MA, that perversely, it becomes a moving comic elegy to a social movement that rocked this nutty country.

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Hagrid L

Apr 1, 2019

i enjoyed the film but if there was a point to all this i must have missed it

Hermione S

Mar 9, 2019

This movie is a timeless classic, the tomato meter seems kind of low to me...

Hagrid W

Jul 15, 2018

Taking a long novelty song and turning it into a movie really isnt a very good idea.

Rey S

Sep 18, 2017

Couldn't get through it.

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Arthur Penn

Director

Arlo Guthrie

Arlo Guthrie

Patricia Quinn

Alice Brock

James Broderick

Ray Brock

Michael McClanathan

Shelly

Geoff Outlaw

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Synopsis

Arlo Guthrie plays himself in this film based on his song of the same name. After getting kicked out of college, Arlo decides to visit his friend Alice (Pat Quinn) for Thanksgiving dinner. After dinner is over, Arlo volunteers to take the trash to the dump, but finds it closed for the holiday, so he just dumps the trash in the bottom of a ravine. This simple act of littering gets him arrested, and sends him on a bizarre journey that ends with him in front of the draft board.

Director: Arthur Penn
Producer: Hillard Elkins, Joseph Manduke
Screenwriter: Arlo Guthrie, Venable Herndon, Arthur Penn
Distributor: United Artists
Production Co: Florin
Rating: PG
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Aug 20, 1969, Wide
Release Date (DVD): Jan 23, 2001
Runtime: 1h 51m
Sound Mix: Mono

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