Product Details

• Actors: Vincent D'Onofrio, Janeane Garofalo, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Kevin Pollak, Donal Logue
• Directors: Robert Greenwald
• Writers: Abbie Hoffman, Anita Hoffman, Bruce Graham, Marty Jezer
• Producers: Brad Gordon, Elizabeth Selzer, Gerald Lefcourt
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Vidmark / Trimark
• VHS Release Date: January 23, 2001
• Run Time: 107 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000055WI9
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #283,131 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Vincent D'Onofrio is one of our most aggressively commanding actors, and he makes a good choice to impersonate Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman. All loping, shambly charm and occasional frenzied explosiveness, D'Onofrio's Hoffman is close enough to the real thing that, just like the Yippies themselves, he appears magnetic and forceful to the already converted, but a fraudulent, egomaniacal hambone to everyone else. (Even those unimpressed by D'Onofrio's indulgences can only admire the simmering commitment Janeane Garofalo brings to the role of his wife Anita.) Which is more than you can say for Robert Greenwald's unfocused hagiography, which should manage to pull off the rare feat of displeasing anyone no matter what their opinions of Hoffman. Racing through the years with the greatest-hits flippancy toward a life unfortunately all too familiar from movie bios (see Abbie try to levitate the Pentagon! Nominate a pig for President! Battle loneliness and depression while on the run from the cops!), Steal this Movie plays more like a lecture than a happening. Even the most obvious points are hammered home with the type of bone-headed didacticism that does more to grate on an audience than win it over. Lest we miss a thing, there are occasional voice-overs by a badly impersonated Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover to explain exactly what's going on. The film plays with all manner of actual footage and FBI surveillance photography, but the mix of styles is more chaos than anarchy; the boxy, amateurish camera work drains all possible giddiness from even the most rapturously absurd of Hoffman's pranks. Straining with clumsy urgency to capture the tenor of its subject, Steal This Movie gets the self-righteousness down but misses out on the passion, and the liberating spark of play. --Bruce Reid

From The New Yorker

The life and ravings of the radical provocateur Abbie Hoffman, who probably needs an introduction as far as younger moviegoers are concerned. Played with a kind of driven charm by Vincent D'Onofrio, Hoffman progresses from clean-cut youth to loping yeti, and from a merrily stoned jester to a bundle of prickly nerves. The film is good on his inbuilt urge to protest: even on the run from the Feds, hiding quietly under an assumed name, the guy can't help joining an environmental pressure group and saving his local river. But the story loses its grip. The director, Robert Greenwald, seems awed rather than inspired by the impishness of his hero, and there are moments when Bruce Graham's script seems like a Cliff's Notes version of the sixties. We get plenty on Abbie's rough, loving marriage to Anita (Janeane Garofalo), but the sexual sprees of their generation are tidied away in a corner of the film. You wonder whether the man himself would have welcomed an homage so dangerously low on fun. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good biography of a great man, October 22, 2004

By 

Itamar Katz (Ramat-Gan, Israel) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Steal This Movie! (DVD)

`Steal This Movie' is a well-thought, well-written well-acted, well-made dramatization of the life of left-wing activist Abbie Hoffman, probably the most famous of the Chicago Seven. (The title is a play on the title of Hoffman's autobiography, `Steal This Book', though it certainly doesn't have the poignancy of that title.) `Steal This Movie' made some bold casting choices. The lead role was given to Vincent D'Onofrio: not an obvious choice, because Vincent looks very little like Abbie, which caused many die-hard history aficionados to bash the decision. However, Vincent fills the role wonderful, brilliantly, expressing all the conflicting sides of Hoffman's personality, his sense of humor, his dead seriousness, strict political consciousness, bi-polar disorder, having to live in hiding and away from his wife and son. He makes the character come alive much more than someone else could have by simply looking and talking like him. Abbie's wife Anita is played wonderfully by SNL's Janeane Garofalo, accomplished comedian but not so as a dramatic actress.

Though it doesn't have that much cinematic value by its own right, `Steal This Movie' does a fantastic job of getting through both the spirit of the time and the greatness and difficulties of Hoffman's activities and his character - a great and fascinating person whose impact has long been overlooked. It's also a wonderful document of an important period that is practically ignored (relatively, of course). For those interested in the late 60s, in the hippie movements, Black Panthers and other left wing political movements of the time, and of course in Hoffman himself - it's invaluable, on top of being both touching and entertaining. A good watch.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars inspiring, May 30, 2001

By 

Brechtian Sparkles (PDX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Steal This Movie! (DVD)

ack,what a great film! the acting is superb, and the screenplay is great - i found myself looking for a pen to write down tons of the lines that i found especially inspiring.

i disagree with the other reviewers - the editing style is just that - stylish, not sloppy. in certain scenes, the camera wobbles a little, but i think that this gives the film an authentic feel to it - i felt like i was actually there, as a part of the riot, and those particular scenes had the feel of primary-source footage.

the movie was not only entertaining, but inspiring - where have all our idealistic leaders gone to? the film left me asking if the government had effectively done away with all of them.

perhaps this film is just a piece of propaganda. i don't know. but if so, i certainly fell for it! and i now officially LOVE vincent d'onofrio!

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Abbie---we need you now more than ever, May 15, 2003

By 

Robin Orlowski "political activist" (United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Steal This Movie [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I received this movie for a birthday present, and having read previous biographies of the late yippie (from his brother Jack..et al) I knew the basic chronology of Abbie's life, but seeing a film (however dramatized) gave it a new dimension which had previously lacked in the most sympathetic books.

Watching this film as the Bush administration (who ignored the lessons of Vietnam altogether) declares war on the world reignited the passions of a very burt-out grad student. It may take forever, and the activist themselves may stumble along the way but change is possible. As opposed to the 'time limited' mass media presentation of social change, this transformation is a much slower ongoing process that current generations will not neccessarily be able to see).

The only thing I had a problem with was the movie presented abbie as a great understander of all social movements, when previous books admit that he did not originally comprehend the importance of the feminist and GLBT movements. Eventually realizing their importance, and the necessity of understanding sexism, Abbie (like many other lefties of his generation) had entered with his own internalized biases about what was political and what constituted valid social change.

Overall, however this was a great movie and I encourage ANYBODY involved in social justice work today to pick up a copy of this release for themselves and fellow activists. The end courtroom scene is especially timeless in it's celebration of revolution/indictment of discrimination and the fundamental nature of the US society.