New York City, 1953. Eager and ambitious aspiring actor Larry Lapinsky (a fine and likable performance by Lenny Baker) moves out of his parents' Brooklyn apartment and goes to Greenwich Village in search of fame and success while coming to terms with his overbearing mother Faye (a suitably hysterical, but still moving portrayal by Shelley Winters).Writer/director Paul Mazursky relates the engrossing story at a steady pace, offers an engaging blend of sharp humor and poignant drama, and presents a flavorsome evocation of 1950's New York that astutely captures both the sexually permissive mores and the vibrant artistic bohemian nature of Greenwich Village at that particular point in time. Moreover, Mazursky brings a winning surplus of real heart and warmth to the semi-autobiographical plot as well as populates the picture with vividly drawn characters who are quite affecting and believable in all their flaws and quirks. The fine acting from a tip-top cast keeps this film humming: Ellen Greene as Larry's liberated, yet apprehensive girlfriend Sarah Roth, Lois Smith as suicidal depressive Anita Cunningham, Christopher Walken as suave womanizing dandy Robert Fulmer, Dori Brenner as the sarcastic Connie, Antonio Fargas as flamboyant homosexual Bernstein Chandler, Mike Kellin as Larry's meek father Ben, and Lou Jacobi as hearty deli owner Herb. Popping up in funny bits are Joe Spinell as a surly cop and Jeff Goldblum as pretentious wannabe thespian Clyde Baxter. Arthur J. Ornitz's crisp cinematography provides a pleasant bright look. Bill Conti's jaunty'n'jazzy score does the tuneful trick. A sweet little sleeper.

Writer/Director Paul Mazursky clearly aims to showcase that special place and time in his own life, in this semi-autobiographical story of a young, would-be actor who leaves his Brooklyn home and moves to Greenwich Village, to live among poets, writers, and other young actors. It's the early 1950s, and Mazursky's alter ego goes by the name of Larry (Lenny Baker), early twenties, earnest, fun loving, romantic, and plagued by an overbearing, intrusive mother named Faye (Shelley Winters).Larry's friends include several rather eccentric people. But they're all his age, and all have the usual growing-up problems. Talk turns to romance, sex, finding a job, future plans, and so on. The script is rather talky. But in a place like Greenwich Village, where life revolves around people, philosophy, and the arts, what else is there to do but talk?Though humor permeates the film, it's mostly dark comedy, which masks the underlying emotional pain of the various characters, as they all seem rather lost and forlorn amid such gloomy and dreary physical surroundings. But maybe the drabness of it all provides that sense of nostalgia for Mazursky, that sense of having moved beyond, to a broader, brighter, more expansive vision of life.The film's cinematography is conventional. Dark interiors match the film's dark, poignant themes. Background music features mostly light jazz, with a little opera thrown in. Casting and acting are fine. But Shelley Winters steals the show with her terrific performance.Nostalgic in tone and sentiment, "Next Stop, Greenwich Village" offers memories of another time, another place. It's a period-piece setting, a coming-of-age story. It's a film that will appeal to viewers who lived through the 1950s, or who can identify with the bohemian lifestyle that so defines that special place called Greenwich Village.

I always try to see movies that aren't very well known. I do like to watch blockbusters as well, but I think that not every movie that didn't get too much attention isn't worth anything. Sometimes I discover some nice little gems. Sometimes, but not this time although it certainly isn't as bad as you might fear now...This movie starts with a young man who is about to leave his parents home so he can live on his own and become an actor. Of course this goes hand in hand with a lot of drama, as mom doesn't want to see her 'little boy' leave the house so soon. But his mind has been made up and Larry Lapinsky moves from Brooklyn to Greenwich Village. Here he meets new people and soon he has a lot of friends, all with their own problems and worries...This movie has some excellent moments to offer (for instance when mom shows up with a chicken, because she fears that her son doesn't get enough to eat), but sometimes it could have been a bit more subtle in my opinion. It was a bit too stereotypical to be a really great movie, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth a watch of course. I give it a 6.5/10.

During June of 1954 in New York City, I graduated junior high school and, to celebrate the event, joined three of my classmates on a forbidden sojourn to the city's famous Greenwich Village. Exiting the subway station at Christopher street, we were amazed at the apparent ordinariness of this place we'd heard so much about from older adolescents and adults. In fact, at first glance, nothing extraordinary seemed to be happening there, with the sole exception of more White people being present than four Black teenagers from Harlem were were accustomed to seeing. For you see, this was the mid 1950's, Dr. Martin Luthor King Jr. had as yet to lead any freedom marches, Southern schools were as yet to be integrated, and in many Southern states Black people were lynched on Saturday nights as town entertainment. But three hours later, we knew that everything we'd heard about Greenwich Village was true and more. For this was a place far ahead of it's time.In the Greenwich Village of the 1950's, racial integration had been in place for well over two decades. But far more important, forbidden talk of sexual liberation, interracial sex, homosexuality, along with political, artistic and literary freedom at all levels were openly discussed, flouted and displayed for all to see; performed to a background mixture of new age Jazz, early Rock and Roll and Folk Music. Virtually nothing was excluded from the social or musical menu this incredible place had to offer. I can't speak for the rest of my friends on that day, but I immediately fell in love with the place and remained so, until it's untimely demise at the hands of the high rise-high priced real estate industry toward the mid 1970's. By then, the people who had made the place justifiably famous and notorious for what it was, could no longer afford to live there. So the Village remained,in name only, as it is today: a mere shadow of what it used to be.Joyfully, director Paul Mazursky has managed to capture on film, a moving snapshot of the social life and time of a remarkable neighborhood, in what was probably the last fifteen to twenty years of it's legitimate life. And I do remember it so well. The rent parties for starving (sometimes talented) artists, the ubiquitous book shops, the coffee houses featuring impromptu poetry readings, the fashion statements (or blatant lack thereof), the mixing and making of all sorts of colorful characters who, even in their farcical attempts to parody themselves, were more alive and real then those who would put them down. This was the Greenwich Village of the 1950's and of legend.This magical place was for me and many others (as was for the director who produced this film as an ode to his time there), our first real awakening and taste of adult life. And far more important, a fortuitous preparation for the new social order that was, in time, to come.The place, as it was, is truly deserving of this wonderful little gem of a film.