The Movie: Think about how cheesy a movie made romanticizing all the great things about the year 1992 would be if one was made in the year 2002. Well, that's about how cheesy American Graffiti (made in 1972) is with its depiction of 1962. Although I'm sure to someone who was a teenager in 1962 would love to watch this and remember how things were, and enjoy it very much, it just doesn't connect with someone like me who went to high school in the 90's.

And while it is kinda cool looking at all the cars, the clothes, and listening to the music, that can really only carry a movie so far, and well, the plot (and subplots) of this movie just don't carry it that far, and frankly, I was bored most of the time.

This movie follows a number of sub-plots involving a bunch of high school kids and recent high school grads as summer is coming to a close, and everyone is just trying to have a good time, while others are contemplating their futures -- college, careers, life and love. Blah blah blah. Maybe it's just because there's been a thousand (actually probably more) movies made like it in the 30 years since American Graffiti was first made, but it just felt like it was all "done before", and thus, makes it not such a great experience to me.

There were a couple of entertaining points in the movie, but overall, as I said before, I was pretty bored through most of this movie. So yeah. I guess this is a review of this movie from the perspective of someone for whom this movie is before their time. I was mostly entertained by looking at how young everyone was in this movie... Richard Dreyfuss, "Ronny" Howard, even Harrison Ford, but other than that, yeah, I don't think I'll be seeing this flick again.

The DVD: This disc is "THX Certified" -- not surprising, since it is a movie that was directed by George Lucas the master geek himself, and it shows. The anamorphic widescreen transfer is clean and relatively grainless for a movie of this age, but where it really shows is in the audio which has been expanded to include a pretty great surround mix, especially for being just a 2.0 surround mix. The audio has been nicely restored and wonderfully balanced throughout the entire soundfield. This movie certainly sounded great.

Features include a trailer, a making-of with some new perspectives on the film, and some other text-based stuff.