User reviews

I wrote the novel upon which this film was based, I worked on the various scripts with Francis, and I was present throughout the filming in New York. An amazing experience. Coppola had been working for a year with MGM writing scripts for them (he had got this job as a result of winning a nationwide literary competition) and had scripted Is Paris Burning? and Patton Lust For Glory, both of which Gore Vidal was supposed to be writing but Coppola travelled to Paris to help get scripts out of him. He had also written the screenplay of This Property Is Condemned, based on a Tennessee Williams short story, and (apart from the magnificent helicopter shot which starts the film) thought very little of it.

For full details of the filming of this first real Coppola movie see my memoirs Dropping Names which is available from my website www.davidbenedictus.com Oh and by the way clips of Dementia 13 which Coppola filmed in a couple of weeks in Ireland (he mentioned to me some nudie films which he may or may not have directed but Dementia 13 is probably his first acknowledged work) are used several times throughout You're A Big Boy Now (I imagine he didn't have to pay copyright on them!) and they look powerful to me.

A sad memory is that Elizabeth Hartman who plays the sexy man-hater with great precision and style was to have a serious nervous breakdown after the end of her marriage and threw herself out of a window to her death. She was some actress and you may have seen her in The group and A Patch Of Blue (opposite Sydney Poitier)

When you see this movie in theater in '66 at age 18, you are probably going to be a YABBN cultist for life. I saw it originally because I was a Lovin' Spoonful fan (who wasn't in '66?) but was blown away by the whole thing and have seen it probably 6 or 7 times over the years. Thinking about it today in particular at the passing of the great Rip Torn, who is awesome in this along with his brilliant wife Geraldine Page. Probably will seem dated to most younger people now, but it is both a time capsule and an immortal vision of coming-of-age.

This movie was a first time watch for me and it was pretty good. I'm honestly surprised that this movie was actually written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

Positives for You're a Big Boy Now (1966): From the opening scene, I knew exactly what kind of movie I was watching. For a comedy movie that was made in 1966, it feels like a movie that I would watch today and I mean that in a good way. This movie is also able to get away with things that wouldn't be shown today and I appreciate that. Elizabeth Hartman gives a good performance as the main protagonist of this movie. There are moments to where the comedy was pretty good.

Negatives for You're a Big Boy Now (1966): While this movie does feel like a comedy that I would watch today, it also has all of the weakness of these modern day comedies. The movie is very predictable with its plot and by the end of the movie it plays out the exact way as I would've predicted to play out.

Overall, You're a Big Boy Now (1966) is a great comedy movie from Francis Ford Coppola.