American Graffiti
Surprisingly, the only one of these films which I own, besides my own nomination.
American Graffiti is George Lucas’s love letter to being a teenager in the early 60s, cruising cars, diners, neon lights and all.
In some ways it’s like Happy Days: The Movie, and not just because both have Ron Howard in. It’s the same kind of nostalgia tinted spectacles look back at an era. In some ways it’s all very era-specific, dated and grounded in the time it depicts (and the time it was made) but there are some things about being a teenager about to leave school that are more universal - do you leave the town you grew up in? What if you don’t want to? What if you want to but can’t? What do you do about your hometown girlfriend or boyfriend when you move away? And of course, the fact that leaving school doesn’t instantly turn you into a responsible adult as many of the kids in this film demonstrate.
I think there’s an additional layer of nostalgia here for a kind of innocence that existed in this post-war generation - these teens would have been born right at the end of WWII - over shadowed by the knowledge that US involvement in the Vietnam War is right on the horizon and these kids’ bright futures may not be all that bright. This is alluded to briefly at the end.
The film cruises along like the cars, without much drama, but that's OK. I like the idea that this film is an ensemble and we get to follow lots of different characters, stories and threads which intersect. It does mean that none of them individually is particularly memorable, and there is a certain lack of diversity in the main characters which is a little disappointing and makes it less rich than it could have been.
I think if you cared about cars at all or had more of an interest in the era this would be more appealing, but even so its a pretty good film.