Movie  1968
 I Love You, Alice B. Toklas!      Back      Home
Harold: I've got pot, I've got acid, I've got LSD cubes. I'm probably the hippest guy around here. I'm so hip, it hurts!
Mrs. Fine: Lose some weight!
Crying hippie: But all I eat is grass and acid.
Harold Fine: I'm trying to stop trying, guru.
Harold Fine: Mondo Teeth. What a concept. Teeth, teeth, and yet, more teeth!
Description
One day you're a career 9-to-5er with a pending marriage. The next, you chuck it all for beads, bell-bottoms and free love. That's how things are for Harold Fine, a dedicated lawyer about to become a more dedicated dropout. Like the brownies served by Harold's new girlfriend, I Love You, Alice B. Toklas has a hidden magical ingredient: Peter Sellers, whose flower-power performance here is in the same league as Dr. Strangelove, Inspector Clouseau and other "best Sellers." Director Paul Mazursky and his co-writer Larry Tucker spread good vibes aplenty as Harold discovers tuning in and turning on can turn out daffily disastrous. Leigh Taylor-Young and Jo Van Fleet co-star in this Age-of-Aquarius time capsule that's timeless fun.

Amazon.com
Poor Harold Fine (Peter Sellers)... he's a suit-and-tie-wearing Jewish professional who's being pressed by his fiancée (Joyce Van Patten, in a supremely whiny and irritating performance) to nail down a wedding date. Harold's bored and dissatisfied with his life, though; when he meets Nancy (Leigh Taylor-Young), a hippie-chick friend of his brother's, he decides to tune in, turn on, and drop out, in a big way. He flees the altar, leaving Joyce standing alone, and pursues the counterculture life. Soon, though, Harold discovers that the hippie life isn't all it's cracked up to be, with its hipper-than-thou hypocrisy adding up to little more than a different brand of conformity. Screenwriter Paul Mazursky skewers the shallowness of the '60s with dead-on humor and some hilarious set pieces; the scene where Harold and his straitlaced parents eat some of Nancy's "funny" brownies is especially memorable. Sellers's comic timing and physical awkwardness, paired with Mazursky's dialogue, makes this one of the better '60s-time-capsule flicks. --Jerry Renshaw