It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

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.

Henri Simoun and Carol Sobieski wrote this teleplay from Sobieski's original story about the unstable, unfulfilled wife of a dentist who occasionally takes off with her 13-year-old daughter for adventures on the road; this time they end up in the desert near Nevada, at a roadside café run by a drunken cook/mechanic/loner who takes a shine to the two ladies and invites them to stay. The premise for this TV-made character study sounds formulaic, though the results are anything but. Loaded down with talent (including director Frank R. Pierson, producer John Badham, and actors Gig Young, Denise Nickerson and Lee Grant, who won an Emmy), the film is sometimes scarily precise about the ways in which we interact with one another. It is predictable that the two adults will find solace with each other--and that the youngster will disapprove and want her father back--however the conversations which lead up to the final events are heartbreakingly real (if at times facetious). Grant's chronic irresponsibility and sadness isn't played for big melodrama--she's more like a wilted flower; Young, gaunt and grizzled, comes to appreciate her company and soon finds himself through helping her. Nickerson (who went on to play Violet Beauregarde in 1971's "Willy Wonka") is a precocious kid who talks like a grown-up, carries around a self-help tome about sex, and makes all the actual adults very uncomfortable with her probing questions. This is a sterling performance from the child actress, although there's too much emphasis on her near the end and she becomes an unreal creation by virtue of her actions. I have no idea what the filmmakers were trying to say with their confounding conclusion. Baffling, unsatisfying and off-putting all at once, it will surely leave most viewers scratching their heads, wondering what the point of the whole exercise was. Still, for a television enterprise, "The Neon Ceiling" is mature and impressive, with excellent cinematography and wry horse-sense. It's worth finding.

I have been looking for this video for years and years and years. I only saw it once on network television as it is a made-for-TV movie. There was always something about this movie that I couldn't get out of my head. I, too, wanted to see it again. In fact I purchased a movie script many years ago. It is available for sale as well. I have posted many places asking if they had it available. Once someone told me that he had a 16 mm version, but I didn't have a projector. The owner had some health problems and was unable to convert it. This comment section is going to be quite lengthly as the comment section must be ten lines of information before it can be posted. I have been told it is in the public domain and available for purchase. Anyway, to make a long story short, I have a very good quality of this movie on VHS. If you are interested in seeing it again and owning it, feel free to contact me. I would be willing to sell the video and movie script to you and you can view it as many times as your heart desires. My log in is same on ebay. Contact me there.

I saw the movie in 1971, I suppose, on TV and never forgot it. I would very much like to have a copy of it. Can one be purchased from any source anyone knows?Never play cards with a man named pops and never eat in a café called mom's or words to that effect, so you see, even though I am now 71, I remember part of the movie quite well after 30+ years. I remember the driving scene when the girl was learning and the incredible private show that Gig Young's character had arranged for himself and which he did not really care to share with others. It was an unlikely love story that had to end as it did.

This movie haunts my memory. I so remember Gig Young dancing with Lee Grant and making a comment about smelling clean hair. The kid, driving back and forth (she's NOT license-ready but determined,) and the ceiling and of COURSE the story of being lonely, love and how things can happen when it's least expected. It has been some decades since my previewing same but...Perhaps it'll show-up again on some late-night TV station and if it does I'd wager it'd be enjoyed by more NOW than THEN. Maybe those that are interested in unavailable movies can do something? Gig Young was a wonderful actor (Lee Grant is great and still is with us) and in lieu of bedroom farces, see Gig in an understated sensitive movie.