Michael_Elliott More American Graffiti (1979) ** (out of 4)At the end of American GRAFFITI we were told the outcome to the four main characters. This sequel allows us to catch up with some of them and then see their outcome. Steve and Laurie (Ron Howard, Cindy Williams) are now married but that is coming apart. John Milner (Paul Le Mat) is trying to get his racing career off the ground. Terry (Charles Martin Smith) is fighting in Vietnam. His flame Debbie (Candy Clark) is with a loser boyfriend.It would be unfair to call MORE American GRAFFITI a poor cash grab because it really wasn't. This sequel arrived six years after the original film and it's not quite as awful as some make it out to be but there's no question that it's rather pointless. I say that because the original film told us what happened to the main characters so seeing "how" it happened here really doesn't contain any drama or suspense.Another problem with the movie is its structure. The film film could bounce from one character to another because everything was happening over a single night. The same bounce game is happening here but it takes place over a period of years and since you already know the conclusion to two of the stories there's really not much going on here. THere's an anti-Vietnam and anti-police message throughout the picture so perhaps they wanted to show the fight that these folks were doing by the end of the decade.Another problem is that there are some pretty uninteresting stories here. In fact, I'd argue that there's really nothing interesting going on here. The worst story is clearly the one with Debbie. The Vietnam stuff is poorly shot and the director beats you over the head with the message so much that you tune out even more. The racing really has no drama because, well, you know the ending. The entire marriage drama is basically an extended fight of the battles this couple had in the original only with a silly protest angle thrown in.The performances are good for what they are and there's no question that we've got a terrific soundtrack once again. Since you love these characters from the first movie you can somewhat be entertained by this and go along for the ride but there's no question that overall this movie is rather pointless. The technical stuff dealing with the footage and alternate aspect ratios didn't help matters either.

Jakemcclake Some Spoilers After seeing Happy Days, then seeing American Graffitti, I was happy to identify characters, that carried over from the movie to the TV Show. However, you could not really identify the characters in common from More American Graffitti and Happy Days.More American Graffitti does not have the same focus as American Graffitti and the characters, are not in the same stage of their lives.More American Graffitti presents the stories of 4 characters in a more adult stage of their lives on four consecutive New Years Eves, John Milner in drag racing in 1964, Terry Fields in Viet Nam in 1965, Debbie Dunham in San Francisco in 1966, and Steve and Laurie Bolander in Modesto in 1967. Additionally, the music of the sixties is mixed into the movie. The events of that day are not extremely interesting but can keep your interest.One problem with this movie is that we know from the ending of American Graffitti that two of the characters died on the day they are focused on. We keep following those two characters throughout that day, fearing we will see them die. It is like movie about events taking place the morning of November 22, 1963 in Dallas up to 12:29 PM.

jwtrox08706 After American Graffiti one would think that a sequel would not be necessary. The fates of most of the main characters is revealed at the end of the film, and the film itself complete with no further explanation really necessary. But, likely, with the success of Star Wars and George Lucas, Universal must have been thinking, "Hey, let's make a sequel to American Graffiti. Let's cash in that check!" I can't blame anyone for having that mentality. This is the United States of America, and I believe in Capitalism. However, when that mentality has been exercised with the film industry, 975 times out of 1000 the result has been substandard at best, and as a sequel, More American Graffiti is substandard at best. It doesn't retain the nice feel that its predecessor had. Not all the characters are there and together throughout the film. Richard Dreyfuss probably had the best foresight of any of the other actors in the original, "This movie's not going to be as good as the original." He also had the most success out of the bunch from American Graffiti up to 1979, having starred in Jaws (1975) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), not that I'm saying the rest of the cast from American Graffiti is bad. So the success and the hypothetical foresight might likely be why he did not opt to be in the sequel. Having the rest of the cast, including Wolfman, return for the sequel gave it some amount of integrity, but the acting wasn't exactly the best in this film. Another thing that gives it integrity is the fact that it has four separate plots intertwined and being told at the same time, just like the original, but with a twist...each plot is set in a different year. You have to be paying attention or you'll get lost. Despite it being far inferior to its predecessor, More American Graffiti, by itself, is interesting. Big tip: don't watch it right after watching American Graffiti. That helps a lot. It starts on New Year's Eve, 1964 at a drag Racing Strip where John Milner is racing for money and trying to get sponsorship. Steve and Laurie and Terry and Debbie go to see John and wish him luck. After that scene, the film goes to New Year's Eve 1965 with Terry in Vietnam trying to shoot himself with his own M16 (which speaks hours about what it was like to be in Vietnam during the conflict). After we leave Terry botching his own wound self-infliction, we move to New Year's Eve 1966 and see Debbie driving in San Francisco, nonchalantly lamenting over the anniversary of the loss of her friend John Milner and her boyfriend, Terry to her current boyfriend Lance. She's no longer a platinum blonde heart breaker that likes Old Harper, but a hippie/groupie that likes marijuana. She get's pulled over by an Officer Bob Falfa (Harrison Ford), and Lance gets taken in for possession of a joint (after having consumed the entire stash of weed he had in the glove compartment of Debbie's car, no less). Debbie's subplot sort of splits off a little bit having Carol (or Rainbow, as she's affectionately referred to by her hippie friends) there with her. After we leave Debbie with the dilemma of having to bail out Lance, we go to New Year's Eve 1967 to see Steve and Laurie with their twin boys. Steve and Laurie have a tumultuous marriage with children. Laurie wants to get a job and start a career of her own, as opposed to being simply a housewife, and Steve, being old-fashioned in ways, forbids it, which makes Laurie angry and causes her to leave the house to go see her brother. This subplot sort of branches into two halves: Steve's side and Laurie's side, but it later comes back together. The 1964 and 1967 subplots are pretty much presented in rather normal fashion. The 1965 subplot is presented in grainy hand-held super 16mm film, trying to resemble war reporters' footage. The 1966 subplot is presented with multiple frames with different angles and shots playing out at the same time kind of like Woodstock (1970) was, trying to get a sort of documentary feel. This very eclectic manner of presentation struck me as rather interesting, as did the nonlinear plot. It keeps you on your feet. So, if you're into that sort of thing—if you like how Quentin Tarrantino tells a story— you might like this. Another aspect that this film has that the original also has, is have the voice of the Wolfman over the radio playing a vast amount of music from the time. Wolfman sort of acts as a master of ceremonies and ties all the subplots together, as does the music he plays. Instead of just hearing Buddy Holly, Bill Haley Chuck Berry and other staples of blues and early rock, we also hear The Doors, The Supremes and The Byrds—staples of that great time in music in the United States. The soundtrack rivals that of Forrest Gump with it's extensive amount of tracks and eclectic sounds. The early selections are there to sort of tie this film to its predecessor and remind you of American Graffiti; while the more recent (for the setting of the film) selections are there to supplement and complement the events. And the soundtrack is presented in the film in the way that the original presented its soundtrack. The music is not there like an orchestral score, but it is being experienced by the characters themselves, for the most part, and it is presented with the certain distortions that the environment in which the characters are has upon it. In conclusion, the film itself is not a terrible film, but since it is billed as a sequel to American Graffiti and is far inferior to its predecessor, I must give it a 6 out of 10.

funkyfry I really don't think producer George Lucas didn't really set out to make such a horrible sequel as "More American Graffiti" turned out to be. But in retrospect it was the first crack in his then-seemingly impenetrable armor. Coming straight off the huge success of "American Graffiti" and produced basically at the same time as "Star Wars", this film was the first that Lucas successfully took away from Coppola without having to bother directing it himself. The result is typical Lucas -- far more interesting in terms of its structure and the way it's edited than the actual material. The writer/director Bill Norton has been allowed to use a variety of different screen ratios and split screens to produce odd associations in the images. While it's interesting to see ironic juxtapositions of the 4 story lines, the style ultimately only epitomizes the fractured nature of the film itself.Lucas' brilliant original film was all about a group of friends on the archetypical "last big night" before school ends and Kurt (Ron Dreyfuss) and Steve (Ron Howard) are supposed to go off to college. One thing that made that film work, despite the fact that it's very episodic, is that you had the core characters together at the beginning and they come back together at the end. There's a disposition of time, like in Nick Ray's "Rebel Without a Cause" where a certain period of time becomes very elastic and takes on more meaning than such a specific time really would in actual life, but everything takes place in a static space. "More American Graffiti" is basically the opposite -- the space is very dynamic, with Toad (Charles Martin Smith) off in Vietnam, his former girlfriend Debbie (Candy Clark) partying with hippies in San Francisco, Steve and Laurie (Cindy Williams) involved in student protests in Berkeley, and John Miler (Paul Le Mat) drag racing on the semi-pro circuit. In a contrived meeting early in the film all the principles are brought together to watch John race, but after that the threads don't come back together and weave apart the way they do in the original. Instead they split off and we follow the characters through about 3 years' of time, just seeing various events on New Years Eve in what seems to be 1967, 68 and 69. It's easy for the audience to become confused, and I think it's fair to say that we do. While the original film seemed to condense important events and rites of passages into unreal theatrical time that produced an experience of nostalgia even for those who never experienced those events, this sequel drags and stretches the few plot points from the epilogue of the original and attempts to make them into a coherent film.The best parts of the movie to me are the ones with Candy Clark in SF and Charles Martin Smith in Nam. Some of the jokes do fall flat but the style of those sections is interesting and they form a neat contrast with each other. A good movie could maybe have been made if these parts were just a bit better, and if the other parts weren't such a drag. Speaking of drag racing, the whole plot with Milner talking to a foreign exchange student was really lame, unfunny, and throwing in Mackenzie Phillips for a cameo didn't help at all. It was just another contrived moment, like when they briefly explain why Curt isn't in the movie because he's already in Canada. Instead Laurie just has another brother who is basically identical to Curt but has a different name and is now played by a very boring actor. There's a black kind of satire to some of the Vietnam stuff, very similar to what I would imagine Lucas and John Milius' original idea for "Apocalypse Now" would have been like. And there's some of that manic fun in the San Francisco scenes that made the first movie fun. But still along with that fun stuff, you have the rest of the movie dragging it down, as if anyone wants to see Steve and Laurie argue in their horrible suburban abode as if they were auditioning for a Spielberg movie about divorce and child abandonment. I think even if those parts of the movie weren't so painful, it still wouldn't really be comparable to the first movie because there's no closure and no sense of coming back together or of anybody having learned anything. It just sort of ends at the point when they ran out of money or something, a cheap freeze frame imitation of "Two-Lane Blacktop" and so many better films.Like the original however, this film has a great soundtrack of period hits that is probably worth owning for its own sake and almost makes the movie itself palatable. The performances by Country Joe and the Fish are great, and Scott Glenn all duded up as a hippie in love with Candy Clark is a sight to see -- I wonder if even back then he had to use a wig? I couldn't possibly recommend this movie, and yet it has some small affection in my heart because I love the original so much. Every couple of decades I guess I have to give this movie a try just to make sure that it's really as worthless as I remember it being. It's a party killer but it's something that every fan of "American Graffiti" or George Lucas in general will want to see at least once or twice. It shows how a lot of effort can go into something and it can still turn out pretty half baked. It makes you reflect on how much of a miracle it is that Lucas actually made such a good movie as "American Graffiti" in the first place, as if all the elements were in place and all the appropriate gods had been placated. Unfortunately such was not the case for this film or for Bill Norton.