Just what I expected

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

This film is a fun evocation of the times, with young bohemian types in lower middle class New York city. The main protagonist is a very sympathetic character, by far the best of the film, an aspiring your actor who is leaving home and dealing with his Jewish mother. You also get the young Christopher Walken, Jeff GOldblum, Ellen Greene, and several others in their earliest roles, so film buffs will love to see them.Unfortunately, very little happens in the film, in the middle it kind of dragged, for me at least. Some of them get ready for the next stage, most of them don't. Pfft.I do like this film, indeed I watched it when I was contemplating moving to New York. But it didn't bear a critical re-watching at a more mature age, one of the crucial tests for film classics. I watched it and felt, so what?

I saw it yesterday... I liked it, being a part of a "bohemian" writers group in the early 1990s, I got the vibe of the film.SPOILERS However, for me, the movie had an ugliness that I don't think was intended by the director: The sharing of Sarah's abortion, from the initial decision to the actual work, should've had more "punch" - it's almost as if no one cared, or considered it not a big deal (Sarah does, later, though, but maybe the impact isn't that much).Suicide. Man, if one of my friends - a best friend - was *that* suicidal, there would be some real action. At the time, the loony bin probably would've been the right place, with a lobotomy, 'natch.This is a disguised R-rated version of "Friends," though they're younger, more stupid, and yet more grown-up, but, but, aren't there some serious wars going on? I didn't catch that anyone got drafted or that anyone had older siblings who were killed in WWII, etc.When the movie came out, I was 13 and my parents, both of whom were in their late teens in 1953, expressed no interest in this movie. I don't necessarily know why, but when the Academy Awards show was on, later, I asked what the movie was about, was it about a subway ride? I recall my mother saying "it's about New York City in the 1950's" or something like that.Worth seeing because the acting on all fronts is really good and it's fun to see Christopher Walken in what is an uncharacteristic role - at least after all these years. Antonio Fargas is really amazing, but I wish the film had gone a bit deeper into his story, or at least developed him some more (like, what does he do for art?). Shelly Winters is superb to the point that her scenes are hard to separate from reality.

Slice-of-life piece about a young Jewish man, Larry Lapinsky(Lenny Baker), with designs on being an actor, struggling not only to make ends meet so he can carry out his profession and grow as an actor through a studio teacher, but also overcoming the domineering presence of his overbearing, at-times maniacal mother("She invented the Oedipus complex" says Larry) Fay(Shelley Winters, outstanding as always). The setting is Greenwich village in the 50's amongst the art crowd where Larry becomes immersed in the lifestyle. We see how his life changes as Larry becomes good friends with several various people(a young Chris Walken as a poetic Lothario who enjoys bedding all kinds of women;Lois Smith as a suicidal painter;Ellen Green as Larry's love-interest Sarah;Antonio Fargas as a gay wannabe actor whose whole life is one big lie).It's a breath of fresh air, this movie, and a break from the doldrums of typical Hollywood cinema. This is the kind of film that allows actors to spread their wings and create vivid, realistic characters. The film feels so fresh and authentic. You really are a vital part of these people's lives and dreams thanks to Mazursky's intelligent portrait. You can really see how much Mazursky loves New York City(specifically Brooklyn and Greenwich Village)and these people that live there.Jeff Goldblum has a very funny role as a smart-mouthed struggling actor whose loud-mouth is like a leaky faucet which can not shut itself off.

When I think of this film, I think of my older brother's generation, graduating from high school about 1956, and from college about 1960. Mazursky catches the look of a certain kind of young people of that era, their fashions, their expressions, their masks and identities. There's a sense of confusion and discovery, or rejection of the restrictions of middle class culture and their embracing of a murkily-defined bohemian alternative, and the disruption that brings to their lives, culturally, socially, sexually.The film also reminds me of my years spent living near and wandering around Greenwich Village, 1966-70. Some of the kinds of people Mazursky shows were still there, ten years older, either mystified or amused or annoyed by the hippie hoards invading them. Honky-tonk, high rents, and mass culture bohemianism had arrived.Mazursky gets this right. I don't know how this picture would play to those not interested or affected by the sociology time capsule, but I think it still would play.And hats off to Shelly Winters, once again playing an impossible mother.