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Poster for American Graffiti

American Graffiti

Where were you in '62?

1973 · 1h 53m · PG Comedy, Drama
Directed by George Lucas

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Overview

A couple of high school graduates spend one final night cruising the strip with their buddies before they go off to college.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
95%
Tomatometer
Fresh

This superb and singular film catches not only the charm and tribal energy of the teen-age 1950s but also the listlessness and the resignation that underscored it all like an incessant bass line in one of the rock-'n'-roll songs of the period.

Jay Cocks, TIME Magazine
Fresh

There is brilliant interplaying and underplaying, of script, performers and direction which will raise howls of laughter from audiences, yet never descends on the screen to overdone mugging, pratfall and other heavy-handed devices normally employed.

A.D. Murphy, Variety
Fresh

A brilliant work of popular art, it redefined nostalgia as a marketable commodity and established a new narrative style, with locale replacing plot, that has since been imitated to the point of ineffectiveness.

Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader
Fresh

The film that launched a thousand careers.

Geoff Andrew, Time Out
Fresh

American Graffiti acts almost as a milestone to show us how far (and in many cases how tragically) we have come.

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

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