A scuzzy dude gets off a plane in Israel. He starts hitchhiking and is almost immediately picked up by a woman. They go back to her crib, where he bitches about the Vietnam War before they screw. After their off-screen fuck session, they go for a walk and randomly meet another hippy couple. Boring stuff happens. Finally, around the 49 minutes mark, our four heroes show up at a large lake. Not too far offshore is a small, barren-looking island with like two bushes on it. They paddle over to the uninviting island on an inflatable boat. (Did I mention that the island is surrounded by sharks?) Once on the island, they don’t bother to tie up the boat or even unload any of their meager supplies. No, instead they run around naked and declare out loud that the World is “
a bad World. Bad. Bad.” and that they are going to turn this island into a paradise free of “
machines and buttons”. When they wake up the next morning, they’re shocked to discover that the unsecured boat (and their supplies) drifted off. This sets off a series of events that culminates in everybody going completely insane and running around like bloodthirsty cavemen. Snarling and attacking each other until they collapse in a pre-
THE HILLS HAVE EYES cuddle puddle of death.
I normally don’t like to give away so much of a movie's plot, but if I didn’t with AN AMERICAN HIPPIE IN ISRAEL the entire review would just be: “Four losers get stuck on an island (due to their own stupidity) and nothing happens. The End. Skip it.” Mild nudity (that you don’t want to see), below average acting, shit script with a shit story, long patches of wasted time where nothing at all happens, one song that seemed to go on and on for way too long, lots of self-righteous babbling, okay camerawork, unsafe driving habits, a poor little goat who's safety I worried about.
I’ve done zero research, but, based off the film alone, it felt like the filmmakers themselves were anti-counterculture and talking shit about the hippy movement. Who knows, who cares. It doesn’t matter, it’s an ungroovy movie. Which is sad because I'm a fan of counterculture cinema from this time period.
I’m sure that AN AMERICAN HIPPIE IN ISRAEL has fans and more power to them, but this sort of this isn't my bag, baby. Hell, I’d be more interested in watching a documentary about the fans of AAHII than watching the actual movie ever again.
