User Reviews

If this documentary had not been made by the famous French director, Louis Malle, I probably would have turned it off after the first 15 minutes, as it was an incredibly dull look at a very ordinary Midwestern American town in 1979. This is not exactly my idea of a fun topic and the film footage closely resembled a collection of home movies. Considering I didn't know any of these people, it was even less interesting.

Because it was a rather dull slice of life style documentary, I wondered while watching what was the message they were trying to convey? Perhaps it was that values aren't as conservative as you might think--this was an underlying message through many of the vignettes (such as the Republicans whose son was a draft resister as well as the man and lady who thought sex outside of marriage was just fine). Or, perhaps the meaning was that there was a lot of bigotry underlying the nice home town--as several ugly ideas such as blaming Jews for financial conspiracies, anti-Black bigotry and homophobia all were briefly explored.

The small town of 1979 was explored in great depth and an idyllic sort of world was portrayed, but when the film makers returned six years later, the mood was depressed thanks to President Reagan. This seemed very disingenuous for several reasons. First, the 1979 portion was almost 90% of the film and the final 10% only consisted of a few interviews of people that blamed the president for just about everything but acne. What about the rest of the folks of this town? Did they all see Reagan as evil or that their lives had become more negative? With only a few updates, it seemed suspicious. Second, while it is true that the national debt doubled in the intervening years, so did the gross national product. And, while Malle shows 1979 as a very optimistic period, it was far from that, as the period from 1974-1980 featured many shortages (gas, sugar, etc.), strikes, high inflation and general malaise. While I am not a huge fan of Reagan because government growth did NOT slow during his administration, the country, in general, was far more optimistic than it had been in the Ford and Carter years. While many in the media demonized Reagan (a popular sport in the 80s), the economy improved significantly and the documentary seems very one-sided and agenda driven. Had the documentary given a more thorough coverage of 1985 and hadn't seemed too negative to be believed (after all, everyone didn't have their lives get worse--this defies common sense), then I might have thought otherwise.

Overall, not the wonderful documentary some have proclaimed it to be--ranging from a dull film in 1979 to an extremely slanted look at 1985.

By the way, is it just me, or does the film DROP DEAD GORGEOUS seem to have been inspired, at least in part, by this film? Both are set in similar communities, but the latter film was a hilarious mockumentary without all the serious undertones.