SpunkySelfTwitter
It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.
Lidia Draper
Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.
Deanna
There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.
Fleur
Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.
moonspinner55
Robert De Niro plays a would-be filmmaker in New York City who is given $2000 by a porno producer to make Peep Art--filming the sexual exploits of his neighbors directly out his apartment window--but action is slow, so he gets to know the woman living across from him by pretending they had a date. Another of De Niro's neighbors, a white stage producer, promotes his show, "Be Black Baby", by stirring up the public with on-the-street commentary on what it's like to be black in America. Audacious early effort from writer-director Brian De Palma, a quasi-follow-up to his "Greetings" from 1968, has some very funny revue-style sequences with tricky staging, although the second-act (with white actors in black-face and black actors in white-face) is too hostile and ugly and shuts down the comedy. The two halves of the picture never really jell, anyway, and one begins to miss the easy, naturally comic dialogue from the opening. ** from ****
EraserheadDr
I was interested in seeing "Hi, Mom" for a few reasons. One, was because of an early Brian De Palma comedy film with early appearance of Robert De Niro. Two, because the trailer to the film looked very funny and strangely exciting. And Three, because I have seen this film on the video shelf for a while.Back when I was young boy, I seen the film remember showing this to my parents. I wish I would gotten this years back. But I recently watched it online with an exciting feeling that this film was going to be good. And as it turned out, I loved it. However, while watching this, it seems oddly familiar. In my opinion, it looks like De Niro is acting like a Woody Allen character.So it's about a young man just coming back from the Vietnam. And moving into an abandoned apartment across the street, to discover the people in the other apartments across the street. So he meets and gets in touch with a young lady across the street while almost being a 'peeping tom', he tries to figure out information about her. While tries setting his camera up for the people lots of terrible/hilarious things happen.Also later on he discovers an audition for a live theater experience called "Be Black Baby" which is a story about white people going to experience what it is like to be a Negro. This segment is actually a frightening and almost as realistic as i've ever seen in a film. But before the segment begins and De Niro auditions for the role as a police officer, it was my favorite/humorous scene where he talks to a mop and ladder. "What did you say to me? Make love, not war? Hey listen I make love very well!" So there's lots of information from the film. I would check it out if not seen yet. I believe a lot of people do not enjoy this film very much, despite all the racial elements in it, and stuff like that. But I would say that there was really nothing wrong with this film. It's a bright comedy from the 70's, and features the early career of Robert De Niro, and did a very well job as the character Jon Rubin. I enjoyed it! And I would like to say one thing...Hi, Mom!
Robert Bloom
The second bizarre hippy satire from a young Brian DePalma (the first being Greetings), and featuring a remarkably spontaneous Robert DeNiro as a young Viet Nam vet new in the city and looking for work. The film (while noticeably dated), is practically an act of radicalism in itself as DeNiro boyishly tries to seduce his neighbors while simultaneously filming the act from his apartment to turn it into a work of explosive pornography. DePalma is clever here; he manages to transform the neighboring windows into fixed frames reminiscent of Hitchcock's Rear Window. Once a failure, DeNiro performs as a reactionary police officer in an all African American theater troupe's educational TV program, in which blacks offer liberal whites the opportunity to experience African Americanism as they beat and rape them in white-face; this sequence is particularly strange and not all together funny until DeNiro arrives as the cop. And finally, he transforms himself once again into a guerrilla revolutionary, bombing Laundromats and disguising himself as a bourgeois salesman. This final section is probably the most enjoyable and improvised, though it contains none of the creativity of the first section. The film is interesting if for nothing else, because one gets to witness DePalma and DeNiro stylistically severed from their current work. However, the film seems to try to satirize everything in our society, when in fact it comes across as though it has satirized nothing.
Lee Eisenberg
Before any of his famous roles, Robert DeNiro starred here as Vietnam vet Jon Rubin, filming the activities of a black militant group in New York. In a way, "Hi, Mom!" almost seems like the sort of movie that they just made for fun (granted, it wasn't a big-budget studio movie). Still, something about a black militant group doesn't seem like the sort of thing that a person would do just for fun. A previous reviewer noted that this movie seemed like an homage to "Rear Window". Maybe so, given the voyeurism factor, but it seemed to me that it was mostly its own idea. All in all, a pretty interesting start for Brian DePalma.After this one, DePalma made some great movies early on ("The Phantom of the Paradise", "Carrie", "Dressed to Kill", "Blowout"). "Bonfire of the Vanities" and "Carlito's Way" were still good. With "Mission: Impossible", he was starting to get Hollywood, and "Snake Eyes" made it look like he had completely degenerated. I can only hope that "The Black Dahlia" is better.