One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

I apologize to all of you for not writing a review in a while. It doesn't mean I haven't been watching movies. In fact, as I write this review I have four more to write. It's just like how I do my homework: I let it pile up until it's too much to handle. Oh well on to the review!

As you have all learned from my Apocalypse Now review, I have a problem with staying on task in classes that I think are ridiculous. As well as never reading The Heart of Darkness, I never finished One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I put off reading it until the last day of class, and needed to B.S. a report. The natural choice was to just rent the movie. So I stayed up all night watching the movie, wrote the report at about 6 A.M. and then went to class. For the record I got full credit on the report, and got an A out of the class. God Bless procrastination. I watched this movie again for this review, and it hit home a little bit more because now I've actually been to an insane asylum. I spent some time in the great country of Poland and we just figured we should go see the local crazies. It was a pretty horrible experience. Everyone was in their pajamas, and the hallway smelled like urine. Of course now that I think about it every hallway in Poland smelled like urine. I grew up thinking that insane asylums were a lot of fun and where everyone danced in straight jackets. At least that's the way that Good Burger made it seem.

It goes without saying that my preconceptions about loony bins were challenged on that fateful winter day. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a little bit closer to my actual experience. I'm just happy I wasn't watching it in "Smell-O-Vision".

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is about inmate Randle Patrick McMurphy, played by a young Jack Nicholson, who gets sent to a mental institution for evaluation. While there he inspires all the fellow patients to rebel against the authority of the head nurse Mildred Ratched. Mildred is the embodiment of authority, and McMurphy has a problem with authority. You do the math.

Before I tell you what I thought about this movie, why don't you hear what a professional critic had to say about it:


In all seriousness, this movie was pretty good. Unlike the book, which is from the perspective of the mute Native American patient named Chief, this movie takes a real third person outlook. While this means there are no hallucinations, it does afford a real "big picture" view of the situation. The funnest part about this movie was seeing all the big actors in one of their first movies. This movie had Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd, and William Redfield (He later went on to star in the award winning movie Child's Play as the voice of Chucky...brilliant performance). This was certainly a 70's movie, and maybe a little slow paced at times, but it was a was a good story with some fun characters.

The bottom line:
Rating: 3.9
Would I own it? I'm glad I saw it, but I probably wouldn't own it.
Would I recommend it? What are you crazy? I totally would.