I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! (1968)

17% of critics liked it
(6 reviews)
60% of users liked it
(680 ratings)

One of the few 1960s satires of the hippie culture that doesn't appear to be concocted by grumpy old men, I Love You, Alice B. Toklas stars Peter Sellers as Harold Fine, a staid Jewish attorney. Engaged to the equally straitlaced Joyce (Joyce Van Patten), Harold wistfully dreams of having a more… More One of the few 1960s satires of the hippie culture that doesn't appear to be concocted by grumpy old men, I Love You, Alice B. Toklas stars Peter Sellers as Harold Fine, a staid Jewish attorney. Engaged to the equally straitlaced Joyce (Joyce Van Patten), Harold wistfully dreams of having a more exciting lifestyle. Through a fluke, Harold is obliged to drive a station wagon emblazoned with "psychedelic" imagery; it is with this vehicle that he picks up his flower-child brother Herbie (David Arkin), and Herbie's groovy chick Nancy (Leigh Taylor-Young). Rather enjoying the company of people outside of his establishment orbit, Harold lets Nancy stay over at her place, and she plies him with marijuana-spiked brownies. His inhibitions released by the spiked pastries, Harold kicks over the traces, grows his hair to shoulder length, and embarks upon an affair with Nancy. But when the effects of the brownies wear off, Harold suddenly feels like the rather foolish middle-aged man that he is. The beauty of I Love You, Alice B. Toklas is that it patronizes neither the hippies nor the Establishment characters; both groups are shown as human beings rather than agit-prop stereotypes. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Rating, Runtime: R, 1 hr. 34 min.
Directed By: Hy Averback
Written By: Paul Mazursky, Larry Tucker
Genres: Romance, Classics, Comedy

In Theaters: Oct 18, 1968 Wide
On DVD: Jun 20, 2006

Critic Reviews

Vincent Canby, New York Times
By the end of it I was feeling a certain amount of resentment at having been had, along with Alice B. Toklas, whose name, apparently, is to become an automatic laugh, like smog and girdle.
Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews
The caricatures of hippies at best will earn cheap laughs.
Mark Bourne, DVDJournal.com
It's conventional and derivative and middlebrow enough to fall back on broad stereotypes of what audiences in Omaha thought of the 'hippie movement.'
David Cornelius, DVDTalk.com
It's an embarrassment in Sellers' career, one best forgotten and/or ignored.
Christopher Null, Filmcritic.com
uninteresting

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Featured Audience Ratings

AJ V

I think this must be my favourite Peter Sellers movie, it's really hilarious and very 60s, I really liked it. The story is good, a regular square guy falls in love with a hippie and it changes his life. I liked the ending too, it's good.
First L

I Love You, Alice B. Toklas has a feel similar to that of Jacques Tati's "Mon oncle", in the way it looks at contemporary society and social interactions. Peter Sellers plays Harold, a man in his late 30s who seems to have little say in his own life. His longtime… More
I Love You, Alice B. Toklas has a feel similar to that of Jacques Tati's "Mon oncle", in the way it looks at contemporary society and social interactions. Peter Sellers plays Harold, a man in his late 30s who seems to have little say in his own life. His longtime girlfriend (Joyce Van Patton) doesn't seem to understand him, or misinterprets what he says. Her only concern is when they will get married and if they will be able to hire the "twin cantors" to perform at the ceremony. Harold's brother, Herbie (David Arkin) is a free-spirited hippy who, as his horrified jewish mother exclaims in one scene, wears "his indian suit to a funeral" (a literal indian suit, replete with a feather in his hair and paint on his face). Herbie's friend Nancy (Leigh Taylor-Young) seems to interest Harold a great deal more, and he brings her home to sleep on the couch one night when she's out on the street. In thanks, she bakes him some "special" brownies and leaves them on his kitchen counter. Later, Harold, his parents and his fiance will all partake of the brownies and get crazy. The pot brownies have a particular effect on Harold as he loses all interest in marrying his fiance and decides to "drop out" and live with Nancy. The film explores the contrast between the hippy lifestyle and square lifestyle with barely a trace of realism. This is pure absurdism. The mexican family who come to see the lawyer Harold about their car accident (a family of ten with braces around all their necks); the fact that the hearse drivers were on strike so they loaded the casket in the back of Harold's loaner hippy jalopy, which then got lost on the way to the funeral, these are examples of the absurdism that goes on in the film. For further examples of such films, check out the aforementioned Mon oncle or even "Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie" (although I didn't enjoy the latter film nearly as much as this).