Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

The great Jimi Hendrix studio soundtrack doesn't save this chaotic poorly edited film where members of a hippie cult on Maui get stoned and practice several versions of pseudoscience like when an astrologer tries to convince some chick that his charts can "channel her energy" or something. She keeps telling him what he's saying about her must be someone else's chart but it doesn't faze him like any other true believer. He keeps talking about her sex life so maybe he was just trying to get laid as he sits inside an inner tube. Then there's the guy who cuts open a surfboard to reveal the hash he smuggled in so he and his pals can get wasted and cough a lot. There's Jesus freaks, meditation weirdo's, claims of UFO SIghtings and endless boring babble about topics perhaps only coherent to someone with a room temperature IQ as the real life Hendrix groupie Pat Hartley takes it all in. Finally Hendrix performs in the final minutes of the film to a couple hundred hippies who showed up for the free concert. Trouble is it was so windy the sound quality sucked overall. Oh yeah, there's psychedelic images and lefty political talk. The typical diatribe on what a mess the world is in. I guess it gave the cast something to get stoned about. Unfortunately Hendrix died a very young man a few months after the concert in this movie was filmed with the plus being he didn't live long enough to be embarrassed by this silly awful movie he was briefly in. Not to be confused with the excellent unrelated Hendrix studio album of the same name.

I was only 2 when Jimi Hendrix left this earth,as well as Janis Joplin. (Age 3 for Morrison). As I grew up,I discovered why these people were so important to the music of the times as they were. 3 people who for 4 amazing years captured the mood,sound and feelings of a generation.Hendrix,in whatever format or context you may hear or see him in,is worth owning. Even for an imperfect movie like "Rainbow Bridge". Why? That's easy,this movie while certainly a test of one's patience,captured the last Hendrix gig on film in July of 1970,short as it may be.The live versions of these Hendrix classics are really pretty good,I wont go as far as saying better than Woodstock or Jimi at Monterey but close. I'm not a die hard fan or anything but I know the difference between a good showing and bad one. Speaking of good & bad,I do agree it's a very misleading and dishonest thing that video/DVD packagers do when they put out things like this. Of course people will think it's a Hendrix concert but, if they stopped long enough to read the back of the case (like my brother did) they'd know it's actually a "movie". It's no different then when "Car Wash" was put out on video and they put Richard Pryor's picture on the cover (he's only in it less then 10 minutes,unlike Jimi who at least (in person) is in the last 30 or so. If he wasn't in this,certainly this movie would be a forgotten entity and probably only on old VHS tapes.As for the "plot" or "story" of the film? It's really not much of a story but it's almost a documentary like look at what the hippy counter-culture was all about. Their ideas of world peace and freedom to be what one wants to be and live like,are ideas I could agree with. I didn't even mind the scenes of skinny-dipping which teach body acceptance. Those kind of ideals are still being sought out today and have a lot more meaning in the long run....but! When they started spouting about how they've seen UFO's and the Government is conspiring to hide it from America or started to become a bit redundant in things they said before,I could only roll my eyes. I found the hash smoking scenes to be rather pathetic,drug use is definitely something I can never agree with. Sixties,seventies or anytime. I could only laugh at the African American couple looking at the camera and singing,as if they escaped from the play "Hair" or "Jesus Christ Superstar". Silly. So,overall this movie is really just worth having for the music & last concert of Hendrix's life,if you were there for those times or you just like movies that are really offbeat (or off the beaten path in this case). 8 stars for both Jimi Hendrix and a few plausibly presented ideas or ideals. The rest is just water under the bridge of time. (END)

To begin, it would be a mistake to approach viewing this film as a "Jimi Hendrix film." As I understand it it began as a documentary about the Rainbow Bridge meditation center. When it was filmed nobody knew Jimi's death was but two months down the road. The film was supposedly bankrolled by the Brotherhood of Eternal Love (qv) -- the loosely knit communal family that first delivered mass quantities of high-quality LSD and Afghan hashish to the western world.That said, the film could have benefited from some better writing and editing. Still, we are provided a window upon a moment in time and space when a positive vision of what might have been was still alive and progressing. Take the film and appreciate it. There will be no more like it. As strange as it appears at first glance it is valuable historical footage that is like none other. The Hendrix footage is just a bonus -- the icing on the sunshine-frosted cake.

You know, this movie is odd, but interesting to watch. Taking from a completely different time and from a different view that most people at the time either didn't do themselves or couldn't understand. The reason why I said this film "could have been good" was due to the fact a lot of people watch this because of the Hendrix material in it. I personally have come to collect more than 400 Hendrix CD's, 50+ DVD's among many VHS tapes, posters, etc.....of Jimi Hendrix and I found this movie to be a real travesty. The Editing job during his play was so mies-matched, it made me forget the last hour of the movie and hate what I was seeing. There's parts where what the movie was showing him do wasn't even matching what was being played. I understand that it was made at a really low budget and at a different time however, I really think whoever actually let this movie be released was on some kind of drug that the editor was on because, it's obvious of all of the flaws. 2/10.