This isn't the best anti-war/ Vietnam film that I've watched, but it's a good solid effort that keeps you entertained and holds your attention for an hour and a half. The cast gives good steady performances with the exception of the actress who plays Sutherland's mother, her character comes across as weak and vaguely vacant. Robert Downey Jr is brilliant as usual, with comic yet tragic and self destructive portrayal of Ralph. Keifer Sutherland is gentle and romantic in his role, a perfect match for Downey's dysfunctional eccentricities. The scene in which Downey takes two LSD tablets then has a seizure is very powerful, especially after Ryder's tremulous speech at her graduation. The film's end is satisfying and manages not to be over the top or sappy, but rather a good emotional moment with a powerful end voice over from Sutherland.

Fans of Robert Downey Jr. who are just discovering (or rediscovering) this talented actor thanks to the box office smashes IRON MAN and TROPIC THUNDER may be surprised to learn that RDJ has more than 50 film credits to his name and logged his first credited role at age 5. This movie, released a year after Downey's electrifying performance as Julian Wells in LESS THAN ZERO, pairs the 23-year-old second-generation actor (son of actress Elsie Ford and director Robert Downey, Sr.) with 19-year-old second-generation actor Kiefer Sutherland (son of Donald) as college buds Ralph Carr and Scott Denney, grads from their small-town Maryland high school just two years prior, as they enter the infamous "Summer of Love", the summer of 1969.We first meet Ralph and Scott hitchhiking their way home from college on spring break, allowing for some shorthand character profiling: Scott is the intellectual, fresh-faced, optimistic anti-war hippie wannabe with a smile forever planted on his face except when lamenting that he has yet to get laid; Ralph is his chain-smoking, profane, cynical opposite, a sex-crazed (bragging he's bagged 14 women) drug-toting slacker wild child who's still a scared kid who can't wait to get home to Mom at heart. Ralph's got a kid sister who got all the brains in the family ("But I'm ugly, so it's O.K.," Ralph reasons), Beth (a 17-year-old Winona Ryder), who's got a mad crush on Scott, which drives a wedge between Ralph and Scott; Scott's got an older brother who joined the Marines rather than go to college, Alden (Christopher Wynne), whose impending departure to Vietnam drives a wedge between them as well as between Scott and his WWII vet father (Bruce Dern). You soon get the idea: Ralph's family is the more liberal, looser one (run by loose-moralled lush widow Ev, played by Joanna Cassidy); Scott's is the more conservative, uptight one (with wound-tight stuck-in-the-50s Cliff and Jessie, played by Bruce Dern and Mariette Hartley). The parallelism gets tiresome after a while, and by the time the inevitable happens (Alden goes MIA, Ralph flunks out of school and discovers he's about to be drafted, Scott and Beth hit the road and head for Canada to avoid Scott suffering the same fate), the movie veers off into Cliché-Land, and by the time the Only-In-Hollywood ending rolls around, you're ready to either throw things at the TV or snap your DVD in half.The script is uneven at best (Ralph and Scott go on the road in a VW van, go out to San Francisco, and then seem to turn right around and go back to Maryland again), and none of the characters are very well written. Downey and Sutherland share top billing, but Sutherland's Scott is clearly meant to be the main protagonist with RDJ's Ralph as a darker reflection on the "hippie" lifestyle taken to extreme; of the two, Ralph comes across more fully developed, aided considerably by RDJ's mad acting skills, while Scott never seems to come alive because Sutherland seems to have just one expression for every emotion except anger. Ryder is really gorgeous and does a good job with what she's given, but she's saddled with some horribly clunky anti-war speeches and clichés that make her character seem flat and one-note.Just as in LESS THAN ZERO, RDJ once more plays a very convincing stoner. Whether he's taking hits off the remains of a joint left over from spring break while reflecting on why he didn't finish DON QUIXOTE ("It had a lot of...pages") or stripping to his briefs while tripping on a double dose of LSD in the high school gym, each drug-filled scene serves both as a reminder of just how good an actor he is (considering his own substance abuse issues through the 80s and 90s) and as a chilling reminder of the Hell awaiting him just a few years down the road.1969 isn't a bad movie, but neither is it a good one. Catch it on cable and don't waste your money viewing it any other way.

i can see why some people dislike this movie, but i enjoyed it.good stuff: music (CSNY, Canned Heat, Creedence), costumes, subject, issues dealt with, cast! young Winona, Keifer & Robert Downey Jr., plus the van and cars, conflict btwn generationsbad stuff: melodramatic, simplistic, like a TV movie or Walt Disney.there was a 1999 'mini-series' (2-part) on cbs i think that was a lot like this. ie; it's more a TV movie than an Easy Rider or Platoon. If you go in with the 'TV' mindset i'm sure you'll enjoy it if you like this subject and/or era -- the Vietnam War and its effects on American families. i only knew of this era thru documentaries and books, but living in America in 2003, there are real war-tearing familial similarities that are only likely to get more exaggerated. seeing a portrayal, even a 'TV movie' version, just helps a little bit.

I saw this movie for the first time recently and after seeing some of the comments saying this movie was good, I had to speak up. I thought it was a horrible waste of time. The story was weak (I wasn't even sure of the intention of the plot), and poorly told. It seemed to jump around too much with no flow. It seemed to be a bunch of cliche scenes with little relation to an overall story line. The acting was mediocre and the points of the movie were cliche and done over-the-top. I was disappointed that I had actually sat through the whole thing. The sound-track was okay but conveying the feel of the 60's just didn't happen at all.