Hi, Mom!

Starring:Charles Durning, Robert De Niro, Allen Garfield, Abraham Goren, Lara Parker, Bruce Price, Ricky Parker, Andy Parker (IV), Jennifer Salt, Robbie Heywood, Leslie Bornstein, Paul Bartel, Gerrit Graham, Nelson Peltz, Delia Abrams, Tofer Delaney, Margaret Pine, Hector Valentin Lino Jr., Carole Leverett, Ruth Bocour
Director: Brian De Palma
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Product Type: DVD

Average customer rating:

[No 0 star rating] An Unbelievably Stupid Film
Funny and Weird
Amusing Dark Comedy
can't believe it!
A powerful and provocative film from the young De Palma

Hi, Mom!
Starring: Charles Durning , Robert De Niro , Allen Garfield , Abraham Goren , and Lara Parker
Director: Brian De Palma
Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Comedy | Genres | DVD | Video

Satire | Comedy | Genres | DVD | Video

DVDs Under $7.49 | Today's Deals in DVD | Special Features | DVD | Video

( H ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
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ASIN: B00062IVJ4
Release Date: 2004-12-07

Description

"Alive, amusing, interesting and inventive" (Newsweek), Hi, Mom! established Brian DePalma (Carrie) as a formidable directorial talent and premier social satirist. Bursting withincisive parodies of home movies, TV documentaries and '60s off-Broadway "encounter theater" groups, and starring Robert De Niro in one of his earliest roles, Hi, Mom! is "brilliant and engaging" (Variety)! De Niro stars as Jon Rubin, a charmingly directionless Vietnam vet and would-be "erotic filmmaker." Convincing a film producer to finance his "peep art," Rubin sets up his camera to film the nocturnal activities of his unsuspecting neighbors. In short order, he goes from voyeur to participantand mild-mannered milquetoast to full-fledged urban guerrilla!

Customer Reviews:

[No 0 star rating] An Unbelievably Stupid Film.......2006-02-02

Reading the posted reviews here, is like revisting the ballessssss white liberals who are portrayed in this preschool-level, skewered portrayal of the 60's. White = BAD (you can finish the equation.)

For those considering Hi, Mom whether for purchase or rental, be sure to watch it with your (white) wife and then project her into DePalma's puerile depiction of a liberal couple, attending an all black drama (except for DeNiro who conveniently is portraying the viscious hunky cop). Then witness her being raped and mauled while you are beaten. Why? Because you are white!

Stupidity not worthy of further commentary.

Funny and Weird.......2005-12-03

The second bizarre hippy satire from a young Brian DePalma (the first being Greetings), and featuring a remarkably spontaneous Robert DeNiro as a young Viet Nam vet new in the city and looking for work. The film (while noticeably dated), is practically an act of radicalism in itself as DeNiro boyishly tries to seduce his neighbors while simultaneously filming the act from his apartment to turn it into a work of explosive pornography. DePalma is clever here; he manages to transform the neighboring windows into fixed frames reminiscent of Hitchcock's Rear Window. Once a failure, DeNiro performs as a reactionary police officer in an all African American theater troupe's educational TV program, in which blacks offer liberal whites the opportunity to experience African Americanism as they beat and rape them in white-face; this sequence is particularly strange and not all together funny until DeNiro arrives as the cop. And finally, he transforms himself once again into a guerilla revolutionary, bombing Laundromats and disguising himself as a bourgeois salesman. This final section is probably the most enjoyable and improvised, though it contains none of the creativity of the first section. The film is interesting if for nothing else, because one gets to witness DePalma and DeNiro stylistically severed from their current work. However, the film seems to try to satirize everything in our society, when in fact it comes across as though it has satirized nothing.

Amusing Dark Comedy.......2004-12-11

In essence this film is a sequel to DePalma's earlier film, "Greetings" with Robert DeNiro's character returning from that film. The humor here is more macabre and at times it seems to be provocative for the sake of being provocative. There are also moments of outright brilliance. One is a sequence where a group of black radicals conduct a play where the audience, a group of white liberals, experience the feeling of being black in America. DePalma utilizes some interesting editing and cinematography techniques, alternating film stock and lighting, going from color to black and white. I would have to say that this is an interesting curio from a time in our country where there was great social upheaval.

can't believe it!.......2004-09-19

I've been looking for this movie forever , I saw it like 5 or 6 years ago on tv and I got completely hooked on it,It was really impresive, it may seem kind of arty nowadays but it has segments witch you'll see later in taxi driver, there is also a very unpleaseant scene which involves some kind of street theatre ..., I definetely recommend this movie to Brian de Palma aficionados and lovers of strong performances.

A powerful and provocative film from the young De Palma.......2003-12-13

I saw both "Greetings" and "Hi, Mom!" back in the early 1970s at a college art theater, which was well before director Brian De Palma and actor Robert De Niro became big names. "Greetings" was De Palma's 1968 anti-war movie and "Hi, Mom!" was sort of intended as a sequel of sorts. In this 1970 film De Niro plays John Rubin, a Vietnam vet who returns from the war to settle in Greenwich Village. His big idea is to film the people in the apartment across the street and to sell Pepping Tom type films (where you even have to look through a the little windows in a little brick front to get the correct experience). Eventually John's obsession with making films gets him involved with a radical "Black Power" group. This results in two unforgettable sequences, the first involving what we would not call a Yuppie audience being subjected to urban guerrilla theater in the play "Be Black, Baby," and the second an act of urban terrorism that gives Jon a chance to say the film's title while smiling into a camera.

De Palma is clearly exploring the idea of breaking the barrier between actors and audience in the act of performance. I can appreciate this idea because every time I see theater in the round I keep watching the audience watching the play instead of just watching the play. Pay attention to De Palma's use of the split screen to explore the dual perspectives and get the audience watching the movie involved more involved in the equation as well. Repeatedly, it all comes down to point of view, meaning the point of view of the camera. This idea is reinforced by Jon, for whom life is not real unless it is on camera, a point most notably made in his sexual encounter with Judy (Jennifer Salt).

However, the most powerful part of this film is the "Be Black, Baby" sequences, and this is where you either find this film totally brilliant or grossly offensive. Throughout "Hi, Mom!" De Palma and De Niro have made the viewers party to Jon's voyeurism, albeit in more subtle ways than splatter flicks that let the audience see through the killer's eyes. Having persuaded (coerced?) us into this perspective, De Palma makes us pay for it in a most brutal manner. If you cannot appreciate the payoff of this sequence, and that could well be most of the people who bother to watch this film, then you are not going to be able to appreciate this film. But at the very least you should be able to understand not only what De Palma is doing, but why.