More American Graffiti (1979)

Six years after American Graffiti, George Lucas answered the call for an update on his classic characters with this ambitious sequel. You definitely need to know the original to have an emotional investment in More American Graffiti, as the action is spread over four different New Year's Eves in the sixties. Milner is drag racing, the Toad is dodging bullets in Vietnam, Debbie is a San Francisco hippie, and Steve and Laurie weather a domestic crisis. The cast is back, save for the AWOL Richard Dreyfuss; even Harrison Ford pops up for an amusing cameo. The busy rock soundtrack is there too, but the old magic is dissipated in labored comedy and obvious social comment. The most interesting thing about the film is director Bill Norton's decision to shoot the segments in different styles, a bold move that pays off in the gritty, TV-news look of the Vietnam sequences. --Robert Horton Amazon.com

Forgotten but not all bad

Like The Next Sting, Texasville, The Two Jakes and, before long, Evan Almighty, More American Graffiti is one of those sequels to that most people not only didn't want but don't know even exists: certainly George Lucas seems happy to pretend it doesn't (it's conspicuous by its complete absence in the otherwise comprehensive 78-minute documentary on the DVD for the original film), a fate not even Howard the Duck or The Radioland Murders share among his oeuvre. No Richard Dreyfuss, and Ron Howard is little more than a cameo but the rest of the original cast are all present and correct - even an unbilled Harrison Ford turns up as a traffic cop - while Scott Glenn, Delroy Lindo and Rosanna Arquette provide the "they were around that long?" factor in the supporting cast. Yet the result is even more of a mixed bag than the original, with writer-director Bill L. Norton separating his main characters over four different New Year's Eves with wildly varying results: Paul Le Mat has now graduated to drag racing, perhaps the least cinematic sport ever invented, Cindy Williams and Ron Howard get mixed up in student riots, Candy Clark's hippie chick finally gets the message about her loser guitarist boyfriend while, in by far the best part of the film, Charles Martin Smith's Terry the Toad is doing everything he possibly can to get out of Vietnam. Shot in multiple aspect ratios from 1.33:1 to 2.35:1 and with some imaginative and often amusing split-screen work, the execution is often better than the material and it's more entertaining than you might expect, but there's little of the resonance of the original.

No extras on the DVD at all, though the original multiple aspect ratios are preserved. February 9, 2008

Great fun movie

It was a great movie with a wonderful cast. It was nice to see there journey as an adult. The twins stole the show. July 19, 2007

More American Graffiti

It is a very good movie. Had it on VHS and wanted to up grade to DVD. So that is why I bought the movie January 19, 2007

unrealistic

I lived through that era including a tour in Vietnam. The military scenes are totally unrealistic. People do stupid things that would get them killed. They have unrealistic attitudes. They are not following what they should have learned in basic training. The main character is a warrant officer, yet he is always doing duties usually done by privates.

The video, 84 Charlie Mopic, which is available here on Amazon is much more realistic, but still has a few flaws. August 14, 2004

A worthy sequel to the original

My brother and I discovered the original American Graffiti by accident. Our parents had taken our younger sister to see a G-rated movie that we both thought we had outgrown, so we opted for another movie instead. I don't even remember what the other movie was anymore, but it was so bad that we left after fifteen minutes. American Graffiti was showing down the hall and we went in to watch that instead. At that time I think it's safe to say we considered it to be the coolest movie we'd ever seen. I completely missed out on More American Graffiti when it was in the theatres, but caught it on a late night cable run a few years later. I thought the update idea was cool and it took me forever to even realize that Richard Dreyfus wasn't in the movie. I thought it was an average movie, but the thing that sealed the deal for me was the scene where John Milner has wrecked his car just before the final showdown with the "factory" team. All of his local rivals pitch in to get his car running so that he doesn't miss his big chance. Just when it looks hopeless and the track announcer is telling everyone that he'll have to forfeit, he is spotted running his top fuel rail down the breakdown lane on the way to the starting line. I almost fell off of the couch. I completely bought into it. Nice concept, nice movie, but the final race scene really pushed it over the edge for me. (What can I say? I'm a car guy.) April 13, 2004

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