Shampoo

Hal Ashby has the deftness to keep us conscious of the whirring pleasures of the carnal-farce structure and yet to give it free play. This was the most virtuoso example of sophisticated, kaleidoscopic face that American moviemakers had yet come up with; frivolous and funny, it carries a sense of heedless activity, of a craze of dissatisfaction.

There’s a self-awareness to Shampoo that gives the movie a cleansing sadness and, oddly, makes Beatty an affectingly amoral roue. Read full review

Made with all the awareness of hindsight, Shampoo offers a sharp sexual satire and a mature statement on both America and Hollywood in 1968. Read full review

Beatty mercilessly lampoons his own offscreen image in a bumptious comedy of manners that turns persuasively sombre at the end. Read full review

Shampoo refuses to be coy. There's a deep, soulful confusion here that isn't careless with frivolity. Read full review

Shampoo achieves a fine comic distance by setting itself so specifically in the past, but it doesn't - to its credit - try to get you, in the present, off the hook. [10 Feb 1975, p.51]

The movie didn't quite work for me. Its timing wasn't confident enough to pull off its ambitious conception. Read full review

All the excellent creative components do not add up to a whole. There are, however, strong elements in the film. Warden’s performance is outstanding. He makes the most of a script and direction which gives his character much more dimension than the prototype cuckold. Read full review

Slick and often funny, but the smugness of the satire and the stunted emotions are finally wearying. Read full review

In Shampoo Ashby shows that he has a good memory for a couple of decades of cinematic clichés. He gives us an unnecessary motor race and some obligatory slow motion, but he misses most of the opportunities offered him. Read full review

The parts are better than the whole. [24 Feb 1975, p.58]