The 60s
The 60s
PG-13 | 07 February 1999 (USA)
The 60s Trailers

The Herlihys are a working class family from Chicago whose three children take wildly divergent paths: Brian joins the Marines right out of High School and goes to Vietnam, Michael becomes involved in the civil rights movement and after campaigning for Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy becomes involved in radical politics, and Katie gets pregnant, moves to San Francisco and joins a hippie commune. Meanwhile, the Taylors are an African-American family living in the deep South. When Willie Taylor, a minister and civil rights organizer, is shot to death, his son Emmet moves to the city and eventually joins the Black Panthers, serving as a bodyguard for Fred Hampton.

Reviews
widescreenguy

oh ya, I was there and can vouch for the veracity of many of the scenes in this series. My background was that of a naive shy geeky type and it took me a long time to come to terms with what happened during the 60s. A time of very rapid and huge social change. The course of the decade is mirrored in the story presented in this excellent representation. The remnants of the bobbysoxer era gave way to some pretty horrid psychedelic tunes but then Jimi Hendrix hit the air waves. His legacy will in 200 years be similar to Amadeus Mozart: they both revolutionized music, lived on the edge, died young and broke. The difference is we have Jimi's live recordings and know his resting place. The characters then undergo some defining moments, and the war in southeast Asia spills over. The end of the film was rather abrupt and bewildering, same goes for that decade. I was there when the hippie era ended in a similar fashion.Plausibility of this story ranges from dead on to highly unlikely. But you have to remember the hippie era was partly based on a lot of media hype and voyeurism. This range of views is correctly portrayed.Julia Stiles was uniquely outstanding in her role as the wayward daughter who struggles against the downside of a society that in some cases was determined to devour its young. I too was kicked out of the house at a young age but I deserved it having chosen to sport long hair and argue with my parents at every opportunity. Fortunately I had a job at the time and all was forgiven eventually. Gee, thats exactly what happens in this movie. Its no wonder Ms Stiles has gone on to many more film projects and I hope to see her in roles that extend her talent.Out of all the portrayals I have seen of that period, 'The 60s' is the most accurate. I was there, I should know. I even lived in a hippie house the summer of 1970. It was a farm house converted to a non-denominational church and some teens from around Canada and one chap from Jamaica were there on an exchange program. Music, motorcycles, pot, hitch-hikers, stern faced members of the establishment, oh ya, I had some flashbacks watching this one.You can look back but you can never go back.

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epi_

This was a great, but not very in-depth, overlook of the sixties with examples in the hippie movement, Vietnam veterans, African-American freedom fighters, the intellectual radical left and traditionalists. Most of the actors gave solid performances, especially Jeremy Sisto. Very nice full-circle story. My only beef with the film was that, as usual in Hollywood films, the end trivializes the rest of the content.

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choosenfaith

I enjoyed the plot, The cast did a great job. If you ever seen Woodstock. This is in your ball park. The soundtrack is just as good as the movie. Julia Stiles proves that she is a great actress, Jerry O'Connell once again has proven his talent as an actor. This is one not to miss. If you did you wish you hadn't.

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Monkasi

"The '60s" TV miniseries would have you believe that between the years 1962 and 1969, the United States of America - the last conservative stronghold of the Western world - did an abrupt about-face and sped off to the left, never to return. Not only is this a gross generalization, but it is also based on naive assumptions and faulty logic that anyone with a high school diploma can readily refute.Take the issue of race, for example. This movie argues that Negroes were relentlessly persecuted all the way up to 1965, so what choice did they have but to rebel? Well, maybe America's racist chickens DID come home to roost in the Sixties - but it wasn't because white Americans were just sitting idly by. Full equality for African-Americans had already been provided for by the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and '64 and by the Voting Rights Act of '65, so there was absolutely no reason for young black men to go hog wild during the latter part of the decade. They may have looked smart in their snappy berets, but in reality most - if not all - advocates of Black Power succeeded only in making a mockery of the civil rights movement with their penchant for violence and their irrational fear of all whites."The '60s" likewise tries to prove that prior to 1962 and the dancing of The Twist, exuberant sexuality in America simply didn't exist. What nonsense. The so-called sexual revolution wasn't really so radical when one considers that the forces behind it had been fermenting for decades (Margaret Sanger's crusade for birth control, for instance). The people who put this miniseries together apparently also consider the Fifties to be a time of cardboard, puritanical sexlessness. But that belief simply doesn't hold water. Was it not during the '50s that Elvis Presley provocatively swiveled his hips and Marilyn Monroe had her dress blown up past her waist? Not to mention Playboy magazine, Bettie Page pinups, and the word "rock 'n' roll" itself, which was originally a euphemism for sex. When you get right down to it, the revolution wouldn't have come as quickly as it did had it not been for the introduction of the birth control pill in 1960, which made sex more common only because it made it less hazardous.And what about Vietnam? This movie simply shows that conflict blowing up in our faces in 1964. What it doesn't show is that the war in Indochina had been raging since 1954 - ten years earlier. The top brass in Washington - if not the American public at large - had been keeping abreast of the events in Southeast Asia since day one. In fact, Dwight D. Eisenhower had the opportunity to nip the entire Vietnam conflict in the bud during his first term, when he refused to give aid to the French at the siege of Dienbienphu. Yes, LBJ must bear the brunt of the blame for what happened to our boys; but we wouldn't have gotten into such a pickle in the first place if Ike hadn't sat on the teakettle a decade earlier. The movie also focuses almost exclusively on the activities of war protesters, failing to note that most Americans actually supported the war to the bitter end.One final note: the movie opens with an ironic presentation of that bland, insipid, happy-go-lucky Fifties sitcom "Ozzie and Harriet." Good point, but it's not as if we were all watching blood-soaked shoot-'em-ups and kinky S&M on TV by 1969. As a matter of fact, by the end of the decade Americans were watching bland, insipid, happy-go-lucky Seventies sitcoms like "The Brady Bunch."I may be only 20 years old, but I know my American history. And "The '60s" gets a lot of it wrong.

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