American Graffiti: Critic Reviews

It is a very good movie, funny, tough, unsentimental.

American Graffiti acts almost as a milestone to show us how far (and in many cases how tragically) we have come.

A brilliant work of popular art, it redefined nostalgia as a marketable commodity and established a new narrative style, with locale replacing plot, that has since been imitated to the point of ineffectiveness.

There is brilliant interplaying and underplaying, of script, performers and direction which will raise howls of laughter from audiences, yet never descends on the screen to overdone mugging, pratfall and other heavy-handed devices normally employed.

It's one of the all-time great feel good films, but its sly cultural commentary is what makes it the masterpiece that it is.

Coming-of-age classic still a must-see for teens.

A funny-serious movie with gorgeous cars and colours and an amazing feel for the artefacts of an instantly vanished era.

Lucas' direction is skilful and assured -- he follows several stories with wit and sensitivity -- and he's matched by his cast, the whole film perfectly evoking the end of an era.

The film that launched a thousand careers.

If Last picture Show presents gloomy portrait of small-town life prior to the advent of TV, Lucas moves the setting forward by a decade, in 1962, when TV had already become the mainstay of pop culture, though for his youths, radio is the relevant medium.

...the ultimate nostalgia movie of all time ...

Lucas' sleeper hit...casts a rose-colored eye back to a placid pre-Vietnam America, a time when rock 'n' roll was young and hot rods were cool.

A successful tribute to an era of optimism and competitiveness which was bitchin' -- and now seems very far in the past.

Trend setter, nostalgic, feel good hit

A hallmark film of the 1970s.

Destined to be an instant classic. The performances are timeless.