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, James Chory, Lori Motyer
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: Lions Gate
• DVD Release Date: July 25, 2000
• Run Time: 170 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00004TJH0
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #18,644 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "The '70s" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

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

Product Description
70S THE: THE COMPLETE MINISERIES (DVD MOVIE)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 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 (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

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.

2 of 2 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

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!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Actually pretty good......, March 13, 2002

By A Customer

This was a much better movie than I expected. After the tepid reviews it recieved while on NBC I didn't expect much and was pleasantly surprised. This miniseries follows 4 young Kent State students throughout the '70s decade as their lives change and they grow apart and eventually back toward one another.

While the four characters are cliches, it would be difficult for this movie to show all apsects of the decade otherwise. We follow all four- there is Dexter, the African-American who deserts the National Guard after Kent State and moves to urban LA, where he becomes a part of urban renewal and opens a theater playing popular "Blacksploitation" films like Shaft and Cleopatra Jones. Elieen is the Barnard grad who moves to NY to follow a boy but has her heart broken and becomes involved in her own career and the feminist movement. There is Byron, Eileen's boyfriend, who goes from young Republican involved in Watergate to environmentalist and Alaskan pipeline oil worker. And finally there is Christie, Byron's sister and Eileen's best friend, a college drop-out who parties on the disco scene, dabbles in modeling and winds up in a San Francisco cult.

This miniseries is a good bet if you want to learn a bit more about the decade and seeing it sans commercials is great! I was a little bit disappointed nothing was said about the beginning of punk rock, but I guess you can't have it all! Enjoy!