Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

Return Engagement (1983)

Director: Alan Rudolph

Average user rating
3 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

'You sound like an old married couple' a journalist tells acid guru Timothy Leary and Watergate master-plumber G Gordon Liddy, as they squabble drunkenly over supper between engagements. Leary? Liddy? Engagements? America really is a wonderful country: two of the wildest cards in its pack became the highest-paid act on the college lecture circuit, debating each other. Liddy is the straight man - patriotism, loyalty, law & order, guns and the flag; Leary is the soft-shoe-shuffling joker - youth, consciousness expansion, evolution, the individual. Return Engagement - Liddy arrested Leary 16 years before - follows them on the road, on and off stage, with their wives, Liddy with a Hell's Angels chapter, Leary lecturing alfresco at Esalen. By the end it's hard to decide which is flakier than the other, though some of the debate audiences are weirder than either. A fascinating portrait of seeming opposites locked together by mutual self-interest, and in some twisted way, by history.

Author: JCo 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

User reviews of this film

  • michelle mock said...
    Posted on Mar 25 2008 23:42 I want to buy return engagement 1983
    email me let me know how much it cost
    Report as inappropriate
  • Shane Bessenecker said...
    Posted on Nov 05 2007 16:46 I like how Leary comes in the end, when Leary took Liddy down in a series of debates and won his audience.
    Report as inappropriate
  • Michelle Mock said...
    Posted on Nov 01 2007 20:38 It is excellent. I want to buy a copy of Return Engagement 1983. Can you buy, trade, or sell the film?
    Report as inappropriate

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Alan Rudolph

Producer: Carolyn Pfeiffer

Cast: Dr Timothy Leary, G Gordon Liddy, Carol Hemingway full cast

Genre(s): Documentaries

Duration: 89 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.