Brian De Palma's early classic has so much going on it's difficult to not recommend at least some of it. Jonathan Warden, Robert De Niro & Gerrit Graham kick around NYC circa 1968 trying to avoid the draft. In between concocting various schemes to stay out of Vietnam, Walden tries computer dating (disastrous), Graham obsesses about the Kennedy assassination and De Niro begins to make "Peep Art"...stag films under a different name. A lot of GREETINGS is very funny and De Niro is a standout (so much so that he was given a sequel HI MOM release two years later). De Palma worked on the script with Charles Hirsch and though highly episodic, it's a great time capsule of 1960s anti-establishment.

Interesting from the viewpoint of seeing an early De Palma effort and also applauding his courage in making a film so critical of the Vietnam catastrophe, but the film lacks focus and ambles from one scene to another, lacking the incisiveness it needed to make its mark among the several really good anti-Vietnam War movies that came after.There's a sense of improv about the whole effort but much of the intended black humor vaporizesWorthwhile for students of film history and in particular the careers of De Palma and De Niro .One should be thankful that somehow they were encouraged to proceed with their careers. I don't remember reading any reviews at the time, but feel it coiuld have developed a cult following.

Brian De Palma, Robert De Niro in his first movie...it has to be good, right? That's what I thought. But I was hugely disappointed. "GREETINGS" is no more a comedy than SCHINDLER'S LIST. I didn't laugh a single time, nor grin or smile. It has one good gag, at the very end of the film, and if it had maintained that wit throughout I would have given it a higher rating.However it starts off very poor and only gets worse as time goes on. Made on a shoestring budget, and it shows in every scene. Continuity errors galore. De Palma, who edited the film, clearly has no handle on editing and literally jumps around from scene to scene. So, in one segment a group of characters are talking, and it suddenly jumps to fifteen minutes later in a different room, and they're still talking, and we're left wondering what on earth is going on.I only really wanted to see this because of Robert De Niro. I am a die-hard De Niro fan and will watch anything with him in it (I even sat through SAM'S SONG, which is even worse than this - by a long shot). However De Niro - despite top billing - is not in this film very much, and when he is, he's not very impressive. (Although he hardly does a bad job, either.) I couldn't believe De Palma was responsible for this film, it lacks all the typical Hitchcock trademarks of his. However, there are a few references - characters discuss the film BLOW-UP (1966) which he of course later loosely remade into BLOW OUT (1981) and at one point a female character subtly picks up HITCHCOCK / TRUFFAUT from a bookshelf and begins to read it.However the rest of this film lacks his typical visionary edge and I suppose it's because he was still learning (and that's clear in every frame). De Palma, never a friend of the MPAA, seems to push the boundaries a lot in GREETINGS and for the most part it's totally unnecessary. The whole subplot about De Niro's peeping-tom habits are disturbing and make us dislike his character - which is a problem since the sequel (HI, MOM! in 1970) revolves entirely around his character. (And for the record, GREETINGS was the first film awarded an X rating, which says something about its content. It's not too explicit nowadays, but we're left wondering WHY De Palma had to cram so much unnecessary sex and nudity into his film, because it seems like it's just there for the sake of being controversial - and almost 40 years later it is not controversial anymore, which makes it all the more outdated and pretentious.)Overall I was hugely disappointed in this movie. It's not funny. It's sophomoric, with stupid editing and direction (just watch the scene where De Niro and co. walk down a street and De Palma puts it in super-fast-motion - what the hell was he thinking?!). That, plus an unbearably outdated '60s overtone (and you thought EASY RIDER was outdated!) and truly awful theme tune (it sounds like the Beatles on drugs), make GREETINGS a truly disappointing experience.

Brian De Palma these days isn't generally associated with comedy, but this is from his counter culture period, when subversive put ons were his metier (see also 'get To Know Your Rabbit'). Three hipsters (Robert De Niro, cult figure Gerrit Graham and unknown Jonathan Warden, all good) try and dodge the draft, and romp through a near plotless series of odd scenes involving their private obsessions, mainly JFK's assassination and voyeurism. The mood is somewhere between Richard Lester and Jean Luc Godard. While it's great to see De Niro in an early comedic role, the stand out performance for me is by Graham, who shows the chops he would use in his subsequent long and varied career ('Demon Seed', 'Used Cars', Bud the Chud). The supporting cast also includes the hugely underrated Allen Garfield ('The Conversation', 'The Stunt Man') in a memorable sequence opposite De Niro.'Greetings' is uneven, and dated in some ways, but has enough invention and genuine laughs to make it worth the rental. Now, if only I can find the sequel...