Hair: Let The Sun Shine In

Hair the LSD-inspired story of a soldier's hippie journey (or a hippie's journey as a soldier depending on what film adaptation you're looking at) was seen by over 30-million people worldwide by the time it closed on Broadway in 1972. Hair: Let The Sun Shine In features interviews with the theatre production's writers, actors, music people and directors of both the Broadway show and the Milos Forman film, plus decent footage of Vietnam War rallies interspersed with a modern day war rally, NYC landscapes, Martin Luther King Jr. and Civil Rights reform, modern theatre groups in L.A. and New York — a whole mash of footage and interviews with unfortunately no strong focus applied to bring it all together. This film will be useful to diehard fans and researchers but for the casual viewer there is no mention of how most hippies turned into waste-generating yuppies. Some uncommonly non-biased interview accounts reveal producer Michael Butler possibly giving his cast Vitamin B shots laced with amphetamines. It's a welcome interruption to the perennial love-in regarding what a great musical Hair was. Film extras made entirely of interview raw footage and empathy forming theatre warm-ups are better for making fun of hippies and theatre people than the actual documentary.