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Monday, March 26, 2001
Just one word: plastic. Are you here for an affair? These lines and others became cultural touchstones, as 1960s youth rebellion seeped into the California upper middle-class in Mike Nichols' landmark hit. Mentally adrift the summer after graduating from college, suburbanite Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) would rather float in his parents' pool than follow adult advice about his future. But the exhortation of family friend Mr. Robinson (Murray Hamilton) to seize every possible opportunity inspires Ben to accept an offer of sex from icily feline Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft). The affair and the pool are all well and good until Ben is pushed to go out with the Robinsons' daughter Elaine (Katharine Ross) and he falls in love with her. Mrs. Robinson sabotages the relationship and an understandably disgusted Elaine runs back to college. Determined not to let Elaine get away, Ben follows her to school and then disrupts her family-sanctioned wedding. None too happy about her pre-determined destiny, Elaine flees with Ben -- but to what? Directing his second feature film after Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Nichols matched the story's satire of suffocating middle-class shallowness with an anti-Hollywood style influenced by the then-voguish French New Wave. Using odd angles, jittery editing, and evocative widescreen photography, Nichols welded a hip New Wave style and a generation-gap theme to a fairly traditional screwball comedy script by Buck Henry and Calder Willingham from Charles Webb's novel. Adding to the European art film sensibility, the movie offers an unsettling and ambiguous ending with no firm closure. And rather than Robert Redford, Nichols opted for a less glamorous unknown for the pivotal role of Ben, turning Hoffman into a star and opening the door for unconventional leading men throughout the 1970s.
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A Classic
Claire from Dublin, 03 Oct 2008
This was recommended by a friend and I put it in my rental queue without knowing what it was. Am so glad I watched it! I'd never realised how many scenes and references in popular culture are derived from this film! The film itself is very good with Dustin Hoffman playing an excellent part as the story unfolds from the point of view of his character, a, sometimes creepy but always earnest young man with his futire looming ahead of him.
2 people out of 3 found this review helpful
Great Classic
John from Mayo, 20 Mar 2008
This is a really enjoyable classic with top notch performances. Well worth a look.
1 people out of 1 found this review helpful
The Graduate
Jennifer from Donegal, 13 May 2009
An iconic film of the 60s of a young man's sexual exploits with an older woman and then falling fall her daughter.There aren't any explicit scenes though they were probably racy for the times.The pace is a bit slow but there is a somewhat unexpected ending as one hopes the outcome will be what it is but Hoffman's character seems destined to be a loser.Not bad pace lets the movie down-music goes some way in rectifying it.
0 people out of 0 found this review helpful
very good
michelle from Sligo, 16 Nov 2008
very good film...hoffman makes this his own with a very assured performance.well worth a watch
0 people out of 0 found this review helpful
Oldie
Enda from Louth, 14 Nov 2009
Oldie but a goodie. One of those films that everyone has to see at least once in their lives.
0 people out of 0 found this review helpful
A genuine classic
Eamon from Meath, 28 Feb 2011
Yep, lived up the the billing of a classic. Highly recommended.
0 people out of 0 found this review helpful
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