The Graduate (1967) was the Pulp Fiction of its day in that it was
simultaneously so hip and so successful that it was widely copied. B.S I Love
You came close to being a Graduate clone. Our young hero romances a
mother-daughter team, and in the end he runs desperately against the clock to
prevent his true love from slipping away with another. He dashes for the pier,
calling out her name, as he imagines her in a wedding dress, sailing off with
her hunky boyfriend. It's such a blatant rip-off that the producers of The
Graduate might have considered suing
- in the unlikely event that this made any money.
Fat chance of that. According to TV Guide it was never made to make money
in the first place. That probably would have ruined the tax breaks! The Guide
summed it up as follows:
"Independently made Canadian film apparently designed to be a tax-shelter
for its investors."
If it had been sued I think the defense would have been that it was meant
as a parody of the Graduate's genre, focusing on the mother of all
Graduate-style pics, the original. I guess there could have been some
justification for that. Some reviewers have identified this as a comedy,
notably the N.Y Times, which gushed, "Some gifted people are involved in what
turns out to be a neatly organized morality comedy with bright contemporary
trimmings." Based on that, some people must have considered it hip and funny at the time,
but looking back from today at the films made in the 67-71 period, it's pretty
damned hard to tell which ones are parodies. If I ever had the
cultural context necessary to make that determination, I have lost it in the
intervening years. For example, I really can't tell you whether this film's
topless go-go dancing scene with the runaway zoom lens was trying to be hip or was
making fun of other films which tried to be hip. Somewhere in the back of my
head is the notion that we used to think it was groovy when the camera would
zoom in and out rapidly on some action while bad rock songs played in the
background.
Like, it was psychedelic, man.
Suffice it to say that the film is no longer hip.
Or funny.
Peace, brother.
