Czech director Milos Forman made his American debut with this sweetly-zonked look at the generation gap, circa 1971. Straight, tightly-wound suburban married couple just outside New York City panic when their teenage daughter runs away...but eventually they tire of looking for her ("She's probably out there having fun," the kid's father says, "so why shouldn't we have some fun, goddammit!"). Scenes of the grown-ups letting loose with marijuana experimentation and strip poker are intercut with teenagers auditioning for a musical, and this is where Forman's true talent comes to the fore (he's mad about faces, and passionate about eccentrics and talent). The well-chosen cast (including Buck Henry, Lynn Carlin, Audra Lindley, Paul Benedict, Georgia Engel and Allen Garfield, with music performances from Ike and Tina Turner, Kathy Bates and Carly Simon) is uniformly excellent, though the thin screenplay (penned by Forman with John Guare, Jean-Claude Carrière and John Klein) doesn't give the actors much to work with--they're all flying high on the exuberance of collaboration. Forman's vision is predictably cockeyed, though his pacing is slow and his staging is sometimes puzzling. For instance, is he holding the singers at the audition in esteem with his camera or using them satirically? The blank faces of the judges are probably meant to get a laugh, but their dumbfounded reactions shouldn't dictate what we're experiencing watching them for ourselves. The movie does take off on occasion, but it isn't from energy (Forman doesn't display a temperament, he's of the low-keyed school of filmmaking); the sheer intrinsic delight of showcased talent gives the picture its charge, ultimately making it a unique, quirky bird all its own. **1/2 from ****
