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Hi, Mom! [Region 2] Reviews:
Avant-Garbage
2009-05-10 - I saw "Hi, Mom!" listed in a book entitled "The New York Times Guide to the Best 1000 Movies ever Made". I have made it a point to watch those films whenever possible which is why I rented "Hi, Mom!" last night. What a waste of time that was. Robert de Niro is the "star" of this film and his preformance is a mixed bag. I would rate it on par with his acting in "Rocky and Bulwinkle".

The movie starts out awkwardly as it seems to be an R-rated movie about the porn industry. It veers away from that into something entirely different as it seems to want to shock the audience into empathy. It stumbles to the end attempting to expand its' simplistic portrayal of American stereotypes. Maybe this movie is supposed to be "black humor"; that genre that shames you into thinking a lousy movie is actually a work of art (when the truth is that your first impression was the correct assessment). In my opinion, the only impressive bit of acting in this movie was that of the porn distributor.

This film DID remind me of a 70's film called "Kentucky Fried Movie". That movie veered off in different directions as well but it had the advantage of actually being funny. I'm actually rather embarassed to admit that I watched "Hi, Mom!". Lets just put this review in the category of a public service. Don't say I didn't warn you!

A must see for fans of De Niro and De Palma
2009-01-30 - I have watched this film twice now and I still don't understand it any better. At times it is quite funny other times extremely unsettling and hard to watch. What do you expect from star Robert De Niro and director Brian De Palma? Pretty much all of their films fall into that category: darkly humorous one moment deeply disturbing the next. This film is a sequel to the two's earlier collaboration Greetings which I never saw. Maybe that film can shed some light on this one. De Niro stars as John Rubin. When we first meet him he is buying an extremely run down apartment with the intentions of filming his neighbors in the housing project across from him. He plans to turn his findings into "erotic art". He tries to sell the idea to a porn king who initially isn't having it but fronts him the cash anyway. Automatically you have the makings of a De Palma homage to Rear Window. The people across the way include a revolutionary (the brilliant Gerrit Graham) and a lonely woman (Jennifer Salt) who Rubin starts to romance. Even that is not what it seems since we learn that Rubin doesn't actually love her he is just using her to star in one of his erotic art movies. What makes this film challenging is the second story, second film really, that De Palma tells which is entitled Be Black Baby. The Graham character is putting on a play that is aimed at white people to help them understand what it is really like to be black in America. He and a handful of African Americans ambush white people on the streets and get in their faces challenging them. The first scene starts off a bit uncomfortable but also dangerously funny. Where it goes from there just gets extremely uncomfortable and violent. I won't give it away because it must be viewed without knowing what is happening to get the full impact. It is very unsettling and feels extremely real and it lasts for a good long time. You want to fast forward or turn it off but yet you don't because you are fascinated and that right there is the power of De Palma. This film is full of his camera mastery but like in his other films Body Double or Dressed to Kill it becomes too much to handle and you want it to end but you are so eager to see what he will do next. De Niro is absolutely riveting in this film, only his third. You get the feeling that much of this film was improvised and he does so thrillingly. He is very funny at times but then he transitions where you don't know what he is capable of doing next. It is a great film to see how even this early in their careers, about the third or fourth film for both of them, they were already the masters they would become. Certainly not a straight up comedy like it is advertised it is still a great underground film.

A training ground for DeNiro!?!?...Please the man is a natural
2007-11-28 - This movie is so crazy. Hi, Mom asks a great deal from the viewer, and offers little in return. It includes frequent tonal shifts, abrupt changes in generic gear. It begins as an urban farce, transforms into slightly meditative romantic comedy, then, by turns, social satire, and domestic comedy. A viewer could be forgiven for feeling slightly whip-lashed by the film's violent conclusion.

Robert De Niro stars (his third De Palma movie) as a Vietnam vet who becomes obsessed with 16mm filmmaking as a way of making social connections and studying his society. He focuses on a Greenwich Village housing development. Politics become enmeshed with sex when De Niro courts Jennifer Salt (later star of De Palma's "Sisters" ) as a means of gaining access to the apartment building, a symbol of establishment and social conformity.

Hi, Mom! proves to be prescient about the uses of media to extend vision into other people's lives and communicate cultural frustration. Although the methods have changed from film to video, the same curiosity and motivation exist. There's also the same potential to deceive public perception; that's the idea behind De Palma's satire of public TV--then called educational television.

De Palma's inventiveness is highlighted in a sequence titled "Be Black Baby," where racial tension, media hypocrisy and revolutionary politics collide. This segment just kill me because it turned out to the sharpest, funniest, most observant, and most disturbing out of the entire film. No movie or TV sketch since has been as funny or powerful about American social hypocrisy. Its details are too good to give away. To see it is to never forget it. The title, incidentally, refers to the common subversion of FCC rules that most people, excited about their 15 minutes of fame, can't help flouting. This movie announced the beginning of a major film sensibility and today it looks smarter and funnier than any current movie that passes for social comedy. Not an ordinary film of entertainment but very interesting. I would highly recommend this to those who wants to see the early years of Bobby DeNiro and Brain DePalma.





[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.