You're a Big Boy Now (1966)

Thanks for the memories!

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

A pre Godfather film from Francis Ford Coppola, and one of his few comedies is an engaging film that exhibits an anarchic feel not unlike DiPalma's early films Greetings! and Hi! Mom! Talented Peter Kastner plays a nebulous young man who's moved away from home and now lives on his own in NYC. One of the highlights of the film is a surprisingly slinky Elizabeth Hartman as the sadistic Go-Go-dancer Kastenr gets entangled with; the film could use more of her. Vivid support is offered by Geraldine Page and Rip Torn are his parents, Julie Harris as his crazy landlady as well as a young Karen Black and Tony Bill. A scene from Coppola's B/W 1963 film Dementia 13 plays in the background at the multi-media club in the film. Too undisciplined for it's own good, You're a Big Boy Now is engaging and diverting and provides a look at New York City in the 60s. Page and Hartman co-starred again in Don Siegel's The Bequiled (71).

I first saw this movie in a British seaside flea-pit - on the strength of just the title - when I was 13. It enchanted me so much, I traveled back there every night for the rest of the week, just to see it again and again.Despite being very much a "New York Movie", it's themes are universal and as a young lad of 13, I REALLY identified with the 19-year-old hero (Americans are less mature than we Europeans).At that time, I only knew F.F.C. as the director of "Finian's Rainbow" (a VERY different project) and of course, he had yet to do "American Graffiti" (ANOTHER of my Top Ten).I have this masterpiece on VHS and the soundtrack album (in mono) on vinyl and they STILL stand up today. I think people who dislike this movie are expecting another broad relationship comedy - but the comedy is very SUBTLE, obviously being lost on those who see it as just another "Young Man's Awakening" movie.But that aside, this is a charming, VERY Sixties look at teen-angst from the viewpoint of a central character who has JUST LEFT the bonds of home (so many feature ones who are still STUCK there). And as one who would shortly leave an English small town for life in London, at the HEIGHT of the "swinging" era ('67-'72) this movie was LITERALLY a life-changing experience for me.And few of my Top Ten movies can claim THAT.

I found this to be an excellent, fun 60's movie and think it represented the 60's very well. I saw it back then when I was a preteen and the extremely talented and tragic actress Elizabeth Hartman (who looks totally different, in this, than she did in Patch of Blue) plus the song "Darling Be Home Soon" ( a beautiful, and haunting song) by the Lovin Spoonful made it unforgettable! I would love to see it again as I have forgotten a lot of it but those 2 things made a lasting impression! I agree with a previous poster that it was great that Elizabeth Hartman was given a chance to play a part other than plain looking women and this was definitely the total opposite of some other roles she had.

About 15 minutes into this quirky film I was ready to proclaim it a must see and to bill it as the best movie no one has seen or even heard about. After all it was Coppola's masters thesis for film school. It has Elizabeth Hartman successfully playing against type as a sexy (somewhat psycho) Greenwich Village ingénue. It has Peter Kastner, Rip Torn, Geraldine Page and Julie Harris playing characters more bizarre than anything in "Harold and Maude" (it reminds you a lot of that film and may have inspired it). It has Karen Black doing a toned down version of the Rayette Dipesto character she would play in "Five Easy Pieces". It has a lively sound track by the Lovin' Spoonful. It even has Coppola cutting in extensive gruesome footage from his first film "Dementia 13".Unfortunately by the halfway point of "You're a Big Boy Now" it totally runs out of steam and you begin to understand that its obscurity is well-deserved. Coppola's script is the problem because the cast are generally excellent and you can tell they had a lot of fun making the film. Even minor cast members like Dolph Sweet do a good job and there are great little sequences like Kastner's after dark explorations of the New York City streets. But unlike "Herald and Maude", Coppola says nothing with this film; consequently it ends up as a classic case of the whole being considerably less than the sum of its parts.I am not in love with Coppola as a director, but even those who are will acknowledge the incredible distance between his good stuff and the vast majority of his films. This is not his good stuff but is worth checking out if you like Hartman, Harris, and Page.