Happiness Runs

Loosely based on writer-director Adam Sherman's similar cult upbringing and disillusionment, the film builds on a fascinating cautionary tale, but doesn't develop its characters past whatever movie-of-the-week crisis each suffers from.

We get the broad strokes of how the hippies corrupted their own movement, but there isn't a single lead character we'd give a dollar to on Haight Street.

The kids' story gets out of control, but Andie MacDowell is a pleasantly earthy mess as Victor's out-of-it mother, and familiar New York faces (Ann Magnuson, Mark Boone Jr., Richard Edson) lend quirky support as the out-of-it elders.

As the film builds to a feverish hysteria, you have to work hard to keep from laughing.

An overwrought and undernourished drama.

An astoundingly bad memory piece that blows its potential dramatic heft at every turn.

This strident exposé may gladden the hearts of some anti-’60s conservatives, but it is a shapeless mess steeped in prurience. Its grain of truthfulness, however, is just enough to leave you unsettled in the pit of your stomach.