one of my absolute favorites!

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

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.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

I found the film beautiful. Perhaps the best film ever to show the consequences of sexual repression. Natalie Wood is absolutely superb, both in terms of beauty and in terms of her fantastic performance. Warren Beatty, in his first film role, is fine too. Elia Kazan knew how to make movies. This "splendor in the grass", "on the waterfront", "a streetcar named desire", among others, are movies that remain in our memory, which made us experience sensations and feelings, which "touched" us in our soul.

Titled after a poem by William Wordsworth, this sizzling drama set during the late 1920s is perhaps best summed up by the female protagonist's interpretation of Wordsworth's words as she states "when we grow up, we have to forget the ideals of youth". The story circles around two romantically involved high school students who eventually come to accept that their shared dream of being happily married will not come to fruition. Tragically, the fault is not with them but rather their parents who fail to take them seriously and excellent as Natalie Wood is in the main role as solid as Warren Beatty is as her beau, Pat Hingle steals every scene he is in as Beatty's overbearing father, more concerned about his son being successful than happy. Almost a decade before writing, directing and starring 'Wanda', Barbara Loden is also just as good here as Beatty's flapper sister whose increasing rebelliousness and promiscuity only makes Hingle more and more convinced that he needs to shelter Beatty from any possible mistakes in life. The fact that Loden disappears halfway through the film never quite feels right; Wood's psychosis as a result of being sexually deprived also feels a bit fanciful, but themes and ideas of parental over-control and unintentionally poor parental advice still resonate through and through. The film is also smart enough not to fall back on an unlikely upbeat ending, instead opting for a more realistic portrait of individuals forced to move on in life. It is potent stuff and Wood has never been more radiant than she is here.

One would think that given the title of the film, there would be a sense of fullness and joy that comes with the telling of the story. Instead, this turned out to be one of the more depressing and agonizing pictures one might hope to experience that deals with teenage angst and loneliness. In a way, I was reminded of "Rebel Without a Cause", as young high schoolers are presented, dealing with the emotional detachment of parents too busy with their own lives or having no interest in what their progeny are going through. In that respect, Pat Hingle's character, Ace Stamper turns out to be the most clueless one of the lot here.I'd have to say that Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty turned in virtuoso performances in this film. Both carry their characters through an entire range of emotions dealing with unrequited love and emotional pain, with the requisite happy ending for the couple nowhere to be found. In that respect, this is one of the truly heart rending stories of two people who might have been right for each other, except for the moral and social taboos that thwart their effort to remain together. In a way, I thought Bud's (Beatty) response to Deanie's (Wood) holding out was a bit overwrought; his conversation with the family doctor obviously held no consolation, while his self directed solution to hook up with a loose girl provided no satisfaction.As for Deanie, I thought it tragic that her solid family life didn't offer the kind of foundation she needed to stay grounded in reality over a broken romance. She's dealt another blow to her fragile world view when learning of Bud's marriage and family, and in his own way, it appeared to me that Bud himself never fully recovered from his first romance. Instead of that warm and happy feeling one is left with when people find themselves, this movie explores the consequences of life as it happens when lived, or perhaps more tragically, when life is not lived effectively.

An okay, but not great, drama. While it tackles a few interesting themes - love, insanity (and how they're related...), domineering parents, independence - it just feels choppy in its storytelling. The pacing just feels uneven, and some of the themes not fully developed. The movie also seems to run out of steam at a point.This is in part rescued by the great performance by Natalie Wood (which got her an Oscar nomination) and the solid performance by Warren Beatty, in the lead roles. This was Beatty's big screen debut.Support is a bit hit-and-miss. Pat Hingle is incredibly irritating as the overbearing father. One could blame the writer or director for that, but he seemed way over-the-top.