Product Details

• Actors: Brad Rowe, Guy Torry, Vinessa Shaw, Amy Smart, Kathryn Harrold
• Directors: Peter Werner
• Writers: Jeffrey Alan Fiskin, Kevin Willmott, Mitch Brian
• Producers: Denise Di Novi, Jim Chory, Lori Motyer
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Vidmark / Trimark
• VHS Release Date: July 18, 2000
• Run Time: 174 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 1573629170
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #235,746 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

In 170 minutes, this NBC-produced miniseries hoped to capture a decade--and in many ways, it did. The '70s traces the lives of four friends from their senior year at Kent State (marked by the killing of four student protestors by the National Guard) through the era of Watergate and Tang. At its worst, it's a so-so soap opera held together by fascinating bits of historical trivia, giving equal time to the issues of the era (the Equal Rights Amendment, the oil crisis) and inescapable bits of pop culture (Mary Tyler Moore and the hustle). The characters are pretty obviously engineered to plumb every angle of the decade's cultural topography: the young black National Guardmember who deserts to Los Angeles in time to join the Black Panthers and open a cinema featuring hits like Shaft and Cleopatra Jones, the sorority girl turned disco queen turned California cultist, the young intellectual woman who finds feminism and abandons marriage in favor of a career, and the conservative law student turned Watergate burglar turned pipeline worker turned environmentalist. The acting's not bad and the story hangs together, but the show is really at its best when the soundtrack takes over, allowing montages of memorable photos and archival film clips to reveal (and revel in) the real history behind the melodrama. --Grant Balfour

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not quite as good as the precursor, March 24, 2005

By 

Anyechka (Rensselaer, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The '70s (DVD)

One shouldn't expect too much from what was a made-for-tv miniseries, with no real big names, but altogether it was a very good involving story. It followed the course of the decade from start to finish very nicely, encorporating in music and actual footage of the historic events together with the respective storylines of the four main characters. Still, it just doesn't seem quite as gripping and involving as the prior movie 'The '60s,' where there seemed to be more character development instead of, like this movie, seeming to focus a bit more on a lot of historic happenings and making as many of them a part of their lives as possible, instead of just choosing ones that would have naturally fit with whom the characters were. The plot seems to suffer a little because of this. There also seemed like there were more gaps of time than in 'The '60s,' with a few years passing between events a couple of times without letting the viewer know what year it was now supposed to be or how much time had passed.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Loved it!, October 16, 2007

By 

FlyGuyMovieBuff (Travis AFB, CA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The '70s (DVD)

I found this movie along with another titled The '60's in a bargin bin at a swap meet. I paid 2 dollars for both. I enjoyed them so much I would have paid full price. I wondered if there was a third movie titled The '80's but Studio 54 was as close as I could find. Being born too late to remember the 60's, The '70's actually did spark memories for me, specifically cult fanatics and all the runaway teens who joined them. Vinessa Shaw is an absolute doll, I've had the hots for her since Hocus Pocus. She really needs to be a lead character hero a la Lara Croft.... Rent all 3, The 60's, The 70's and Studio 54 and spend a weekend revisiting 3 decades of excessive excess.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Better than everyone's giving it credit for!, September 16, 2002

By 

"we_are_pink_machine" (Seattle, Wa.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The '70s (DVD)

Though this movie would definitally not be a blockbuster if it was released in a movie theatre rather than on tv; that doesn't make it any less of a movie!
I think this movie was great! I loved the music; and the cast, as well. Anyone who is going to doubt this movie before watching it is CRAZY! It's really a great movie; and teaches people (particularly teenagers) things that they would normally be bored by (i.e. the Watergate scandal)! And I think that anything that gets kids interested in the history of the U.S. is wonderful.
I think this is a great movie for people of ALL AGES, and I would definitally recommend it to anyone!