Product Details

• Actors: Arlo Guthrie, Patricia Quinn, James Broderick, Pete Seeger, Lee Hays
• Directors: Arthur Penn
• Writers: Arlo Guthrie, Arthur Penn, Venable Herndon
• Producers: Harold Leventhal, Hillard Elkins, Joseph Manduke
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
• VHS Release Date: December 7, 1994
• Run Time: 110 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (68 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6301963989
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #166,288 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

You can get anything you want there, or so went Arlo Guthrie's song, a lengthy monologue about a Thanksgiving dinner and how its aftermath kept Guthrie out of the Vietnam-era draft. Arthur Penn's movie version, which stars Guthrie, James Broderick, and Pat Quinn, has a shambling, good-natured feel, much like Guthrie's epic tall tale. But as it follows Guthrie's adventures (he gets arrested for improper disposal of Thanksgiving garbage and the arrest renders him unfit for military service, in the draft board's eyes), it also examines the freewheeling nature of relationships in that period--and the toll that freedom took on those relationships. Guthrie is a natural performer, particularly funny during the draft board sequence; but the heart of the film is Quinn and Broderick's troubled marriage. --Marshall Fine

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

196 of 209 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great DVD - But..., April 1, 2001

By 

Arlo Guthrie (Pittsfield, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alice's Restaurant (DVD)

I had fun doing a running commentary for this new DVD release which I know you'll enjoy. However, because MGM/UA would not allow our small company to purchase the DVD at a decent wholesale price, they've cut us out from selling the product through our own retail outlet (we can buy it cheaper here at Amazon) where we've been selling our CDs and VHS movies (including Alice's Restaurant) for years. We are boycotting the sale of the DVD until changes can be made. Stick with us and wait. Then buy it here or anywhere. Thanks, Arlo Guthrie

40 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Alice's Restaurant: A Vision of Joyful Abundance, March 6, 2001

By 

"ruzzante" (UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alice's Restaurant (DVD)

The excellent-quality Alice's Restaurant DVD is a cultural gem! Thanks to audio commentary by Arlo Guthrie himself, Alice's Restaurant merits nomination as the greatest movie ever about the 60s or, for that matter, any time of profound social and spiritual change! What adds human depth to this movie is that many people involved in the real-life drama are here, in the same locations, playing themselves!

The 60s social/intellectual/spiritual divide is illustrated in Alice's Restaurant by this insane question: can anyone who dumps litter be sufficiently moral to help kill people in another land? The social divide of the 60s has additional clarity in Alice's Restaurant because the movie director was in one ideological camp and Arlo Guthrie was in the other! In addition, an extremely valid spiritual dimension is provided to the story because Alice's restaurant was in a church; a fertile and far-reaching symbol! It makes the movie and real-life story into one wonderful (but never utopian) heart-warming adventure!

The movie has an amazing number of dimensions. What amazes most, however, is the Alice's Restaurant song, on which the movie was partly based. It still sounds wonderfully fresh and naïve! It maintains its power because it is not only a celebration of the genuine joys of life, love, and friendship but also an indisputable anthem that fully affirms the great natural value of simply having fun in life when you can `get anything you want'. It seems a totally innocuous, irrelevant song ... yet, that remains its overwhelming strength rather than its weakness. After the movie, how life-affirming and universally joyous an anthem the song becomes!

My hat is off to you Mr. Guthrie! Thank you!

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Alice is a GrOOOOOvy cook, August 7, 2000

By 

"nickilo1" ([e-mail]) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alice's Restaurant [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This movie embodies the contrasts of the 60's. It shows the freedom of being young and the joys that accompany it. It also shows the fear of being drafted into a war in which the counterculture was determined to stifle. "Alice" also shows the sensitivity and the integrity that Arlo Guthrie possessed and continues to possess in his 50's. Although this movie is so timely with the issues of the 60's (war, drugs, and nonconformity), it is also timeless because no matter what the decade, or what the issues at hand, everyone is, at one point, the idealistic child (represented by Arlo and friends) and the "Not young but not old" confused, mid to late 20'something adult (represented by Alice and Ray). Both represent phases of life common to all of us. Do not be mistaken, it has its moments of drama and tragedy, but it is ultimately humorous and making a mockery of the establishment that rejected a generation. Arlo is quirky and hilarious. He is a brilliant storyteller, and most would agree that this is his best story of all. A MUST SEE!