Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful transfer!, January 24, 2003
Cheers to Johnny Depp, Sandra Bernhard, and Julianne Moore for citing this almost forgotten '70's classic as one of their all time favorites. To most, Shampoo is looked at as a Beatty vanity project, a dated box-office hit, or just dull and not worth your time. It's a shame because it's one of the best films of its time and is probably the last example of a sex comedy having any sly wit, sophistication, or style. The character of George (Warren Beatty) is based on Manson family victim Jay Sebring -a close friend of Beatty's- and his quest for maturity and respect cuts through the dozens of meaningless, in-your-face type comedies of today. No, it's not an overbearingly gross, laugh-'til-your-side-aches ride with lots of gratuitous nudity and forgettable one-note characters; the film builds at a carefully constructed pace and -using humor as an undercurrent and beautifully soft neutral colors as its visual look -packs a slight emotional wallop at the end. It's as close to an American art film comedy as you're going to come.The collaboration of screenwriter Robert Towne (Chinatown) and director Hal Ashby (Harold and Maude, The Last Detail, Coming Home) is a small dream and together they create some beautiful magic: the subtlety of Towne's very funny dialogue never becomes monotonous like a bad Broadway farce and Ashby's camera allows a viewer to discover hidden depths in Goldie Hawn, Carrie Fisher, Jack Warden (Oscar nominated), and Lee Grant (Oscar winner). All the performances are first rate but Julie Christie as George's true love interest steals the movie with those wonderfully expressive eyes and her classic drunk scene. (One of the best visual jokes in the movie is the backside of the black cocktail dress she wears at the election dinner.)
I owned the Criterion laserdisc version of Shampoo and saw a great print on the big screen but this digitally remastered DVD treatment is nothing short of fabulous. The visual look of Shampoo is very important since as the story gets deeper so do the colors (watch the scene where George cuts Jackie's hair in her bathroom while they both glow in the fading afternoon light) but you could never tell from the VHS tape copies or even on its scatter-shot television appearances. This transfer does the film justice but unfortunately there are no special features whatsoever. A making-of documentary or even a commentary track (with the exception of Jack Warden all the principal actors are still alive) would have made this edition a great feature in your library. It's still worth buying but also just a bit of a letdown. Regardless, you can view Shampoo as either a lumbering, relic-like snapshot of its time or a morality tale with depth, humor, and some class. A richly rewarding viewing experience awaits the viewer who sees the latter. Enjoy!
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Shining, Gleaming, Streaming, Flaxen, Waxen, October 20, 2005
SHAMPOO harks back to the glory days of Hollywood to the famous incident at Ciro's (the night club) when Paulette Goddard added spice to her career by slipping under a table to give an evening's worth of excitement to director Anatole Litvak, thereby sealing her reputation as a party girl who really didn't care what anyone thought. (In another version of the story, Goddard and Litvak both vanished under the table simultaneously and had sex on the nightclub floor on the feet of their friends.) In any case, SHAMPOO recalls this incident by having Julie Christie slide out of her banquette to take care of the hairdresser, George Roundy (played by Warren Beatty) even though her "boyfriend" (Jack Warden) is hovering dangerously close by.
SHAMPOO also takes its cues from British Restoration comedy like Wycherley and Congreve, a world of cuckolded gentlemen, odious bourgeoisie, discontented wives, and boys on the make, re-locating the center of the gilded universe from London to Los Angeles in the late 1960s. As in Congreve, the husbands believe it's safe to leave their wives and daughters alone with George because he's a dandy/aesthete/hairdresser. That suits him down to the ground, for on the bodies of these ignorant women he can have his revenge on the men who treat him as a tradesman, a social inferior. The picture has a slightly dated air, as if to say, we're different now than when the action of this film is laid, which might be difficult to apprehend today.
Beatty is fine, though his haircut doesn't recall the 1960s as much as the mid 70s when the film was produced. As the typically 60s sex objects George dallies with, Julie Christie and Goldie Hawn are perfectly cast, almost too perfectly, they hardly seem to be acting at all; their haircuts and their clothes set the scene and call "cut" at the end of each take. Kathryn Blondell, the insanely talented Hollywood hairdresser, did the real hair work here, at the beginning of a long career which has included just about every movie Goldie Hawn has done since (Kate Hudson too!), as well as such period pieces as APOLLO 13 and BIRD. She is the master at making women look great on screen, and not just leading ladies, but supporting players and extras too. But this might be her best work-other than the futuristic styles she gave to Paul Verhoeven's STARSHIP TROOPERS.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
He's just a boy who can't say no., July 8, 2006
"Shampoo" is probably the most sophisticated sex comedy ever made in this country. It's a very clear-eyed (and very funny) look at how love and lust get inextricably mixed up with up with power, money, position, and politics. Of course, contrary to almost every critique posted here, George (Warren Beatty), the philandering Beverly Hills hairdresser, is the primary victim of the rules of the game, late-60s Southern California-style. Unlike the protagonist of the great Renoir movie, George doesn't end up dead, but he's left alone, abandoned by all the women he's bedded, looking like a naive fool. And that's George's sin--he's an uncynical romantic in a world that doesn't know the difference between felt emotion and deliberate calculation. He sleeps with women because he genuinely likes them. For him, taking a woman to bed is an extension of doing her hair--it's an intimate act in which he makes her look and feel better. All the other characters in the movie use sex as part of a larger plan--they each have some separate goal on their mind, which they achieve in one way or another, and George is left behind with his silly emotional and sexual vulnerabiliy. He's Don Giovanni in reverse--the boy who can't say no because he actually gives a damn--and he pays a steep price for his availability. Playing a slightly out of it dupe, Beatty has never been better or more dazzlingly glamorous. And he's surrounded by a flawless ensemble cast--Lee Grant is simply astonishing as a deceived and deceiving Beverly Hills matron, and Julie Christie, in her flared pants and mini skirts, is peerlessy sexy as the 1968 version of a Rodeo Drive courtesan. Thanks to Robert Towne, "Shampoo" also has some of the most natural, unforced, yet revealing dialog ever heard in an American movie--nothing is stylized or italicized, but every nonchalant remark hits target like a polished Wilde epigram. Delectable.
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