Adam at Six A.M.

That would be the only reason why I would watch it again. I was 3 years old when it was made, but I remember my parents talking about how exciting it was to have Michael Douglas staying in our little 'ol town and how everyone in town were extras in the movie. I've seen it as an adult and the only thing I enjoyed about it was looking for familiar faces and familiar places in my hometown. I would imagine anyone not from my hometown wouldn't enjoy this movie as much as I did.

It is kind of an interesting movie to watch, early in the career of Michael Douglas. I believe this movie was made before he did Streets of San Francisco which by the way I absolutely loved!

The person who made the comment that the title of this film makes no sense is incorrect. Of course, the title makes sense. The main character, Adam, is a young college professor who spends the summer working at a blue collar job. Thus, he gets up at 6 a.m. to go to work. The entire movie is about the summer that he spends working at this job. I first saw this film when I was about twelve or thirteen, and I absolutely loved it. It's now a period piece, but it's an excellent period piece. The last shot of this film--which I won't reveal here--is wonderful. I've described it to many, many people over the years as being one of the funniest things that I've ever seen in a movie. I can still remember watching this on television with my brother and my father, and we all laughed hysterically at that final shot.

This is an unusual film for Michael Douglas, and kind of "lost". I wonder if it was ever even released? I rather doubt it's even available on video or DVD today: your only shot at seeing it is late at night on same cable station. Which is how I saw it, many years ago.

Adam is a late 20s college professor having a sort of early mid-life crisis when he decides to spontaneously attend a family funeral in the Midwest. Away from his intellectual/liberal environment and hedonistic lifestyle, he finds life in the small town surprisingly warm and embracing. In time, he has a working class job (light years from his cushy teaching job), friends (Joe Don Baker) and a cute girlfriend for whom he has the major hots, but who is "saving herself for marriage." Adam becomes, for this one summer anyhow, so immersed in this simple down-to-earth lifestyle that he decides to marry the girlfriend and buy a house.

At this point, the film takes a sharp detour...as if ashamed suddenly of the idea that simple hard work, good friends and a loving marriage might be exactly what spoiled pretentious Adam needed all along. So he abruptly decides to "chuck it all" when sent on a mission to buy vanilla ice cream for his fiancé's bridal shower...and skedaddles out of town in his sports car, presumably never to be seen again. (Or maybe to return to his unhappy life as a swinging college teacher.) No closure on the presumably broken-hearted fiancé, who had to be humiliated by his disappearance, or his confused and hurt friends.

For some reason this film has stuck in my mind all these years. I think because up until the final couple of minutes, it almost seems like a pre-Reagan paean to family values...which would have made "Adam" a real oddity in 1970. Some good supporting work from supporting actors. This film also foreshadows the 80s film, "Amber Waves of Grain" with Kurt Russell and Mare Winningham, about a spoiled actor who becomes a farm worker.

If you are up late at night and this comes on...watch it. Something different, and you get to see a very young Michael Douglas.

(BTW: No, the title makes no sense at all.)

A minor cult classic for fans of 70s films. Joe Don Baker is outstanding. I highly recommend it, if you see it in the late-night TV listing.

Call it sentiments of generation X before generation X. This movie was fantastic. It asks the sincere question: do you see yourself as successful, or do others see it in you? And what would happen if you and society found your success in different places? The last scene captures the outcome visually with great symbolism.