CinemaSerf
9/5/2024
This is sort of worth it for the last fifteen minutes, but otherwise it's a pretty awful waste of our time and their efforts - such as they are. James MacArthur and Patricia Oliver are being disciplined by their university for the school rag publishing material just a bit to close to the bone for the principal. In protest, Richard Todd ("Dr. Barnett") quits and is soon a spokesman for their free love style existence. Initially, he holds to his liberté, égalité, fraternité existence but the adulation and success, as well as a little romantic attention from his erstwhile student gradually corrupts his soul and soon someone is heading for a fall. It's really only at the end of this film, that we get anywhere near a point to it all. The proof that absolute power (or a variation thereof, in this case) corrupts absolutely - even those with the most benign intentions. Todd is hopeless, however - he really is a fish out fo water; MacArthur and Oliver are just too preppy and cute to evoke any sort of passion for what they are trying to achieve - indeed the whole "niceness" of the first flower-power, anti-establishment 75 minutes is quite hard to sit through. The censors rejected it... I can't think why?
