SOURCE: Champlin, Charles. “Hair Comes to the Screen.” Los Angeles Times (15 March 1979): section 4, pp. 1, 25.

In the following review, Champlin assesses the strengths of Hair, calling the film a “poignant reminder” of America during the Vietnam War era.

Fresh off the bus, duffel bag in hand, the boy from Oklahoma stares in wonderment. A happening is happening in Central Park, Manhattan Island, U.S.A., vintage '60s. Crazy kids with long hair and costume clothes are sporting on the greensward. Then, like a foreboding shadow, two mounted policemen invade the scene, towering over it and monstrously silhouetted, keep the sunshine out.

It looks like curtains for our new friends. But no: The cops' handsome horses break into a sashaying circus two-step in nice time to the rollicking music.

In its sly and marvelous surprise, and in its artful melding of a breezy and literally open-air naturalism with the...