Go Ask Alice

I had to view this movie as part of a drug prevention program in junior high school('73-'74). I was between 12 and 13 years old at the time. The early 70s were turbulent and the drug culture was making its way to small town America. Unfortunately, the movie, in my opinion, made the drug scene seem cool while the straight kids were portrayed as "geeky". I personally thought that Alice was the coolest person in the world! I think the film could have achieved more balance and probably been more effective as "drug prevention" material had it presented the straight kids in a more appealing light. While I cannot say that it was the catalyst to my own "issues", it certainly did fan flames that were smoldering. I rated it 9 because watching it is nostalgic and I do think it is a fair representation of the drug culture during that time in history...not a 9 for it meeting its original intent...in that respect I don't think it succeeded. Most of the girls I knew wanted to be like Alice...including me!

When this film first came out I watched it and it scared the crap out of me. There are a few movies in my life that had a real impact on me and this was one of them. I hadn't seen it since then but recently watched it again and thought I didn't understand really why although saying that when I hear the music that was played during it sang by Grace Slick I still get that sinking, sad, depressed feeling that it originally gave me. Is the quality great compared to today's movies? No, I can't say it is and I've seen better telling of this type of story. Is the acting the best? No, again seen better? Is the storyline based on half-truths? Yes it is. Did it do it's job to scare the crap out of me when I was a youngster. Heck yes and I think was a big influence in the fact that now at 48 years old, almost 49, I never touched a drug in my life. So it may not have been the best acting, most truthfully storyline, the best quality but I think in it's way it saved many of us from ever even thinking about starting down the path of drugs.

This movie would only be appealing to me if I were on drugs just like the main character Alice (Jamie Smith-Jackson) was. At times, I could barely follow the story line because the scenes jumped around quite a bit. In these scenes, the acting seemed as if the actors will still reading off the scripts. The emotion just wasn't there. The characters just stood there, said their lines, and a new scene was up. The jumping from one scene to the next caused some editing problems. Not enough of the story was told. For example, when Alice meets Chris (Jennifer Edwards) in the shop. Alice is dressed and her hair is done. The next scene Alice and Chris are dressed like twins with their hair ironed. I was confused on how she would change so fast. The dialogues between all the characters were short and not a lot of important things were said. One line was, ` Now you're holding,' said by Jan (Ayn Ruymen) and then it was the end of that scene. The movie didn't grab my attention. This may have also occurred because I read the book before hand. The movie switched a lot of the scenes around and removed some of the characters. But they can only do so much with a movie taken from a book.

The movie was decent, but it left so much of the amazing imagery out. Also, the book really examines Alice's relationships with people and her feelings of loneliness. The movie was not personal enough. There is an intimacy in reading Alice's diary that draws you in and makes you really experience what she felt. I thought the movie approached this too much as a public service announcement.

I remember watching this with my sister and parents when it was first broadcast on TV. For it's time it pushed the envelope though realizing by today's standards it's kitschy with innuendo and a carefully crafted script to keep it within broadcast standards of the time. It was very good, and did a fair job of scaring some kids to not try drugs. I think the most our group did as teens was 8 people sharing a joint which had no effect; though, sadly I did know friends and kids in school to totally screw up with drugs, a couple died. It served it;s purpose at the time, it would be fodder to today's teens that hear much worse watching television commercials, that are barraged worse than the drug culture of the late 60's early 70's. I love Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplanes original version of Go Ask Alice "White Rabbit" which they did not use in the film.