Back-to-back Stanley Kramer movies—what was I thinking?  It wasn’t a conscious decision, as I actually grabbed two discs more or less at random.  At least, I didn’t realize at the time they shared the same director.

Many directors have a signature style, but I have trouble finding consistency across Kramer’s body of work.  Here I am following up the epic comedy It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World with the turgid student unrest drama R.P.M.  Then again, what did High Noon have to do with The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T?

R.P.M. stands for “revolutions per minute”.  Here, it isn’t about turntable speeds, but about the social revolutions happening on college campuses across the country at the time.  And, just like most other major studio pictures of the time that tried to tackle this subject, this is an overly-earnest and deeply unhip affair. 

Remember that movie they were making in The Exorcist, the one about protestors on a college campus?  This often felt like we were watching the finished version of the film they were shooting.

We’re not even through the opening credits when the first misstep happens.  I know they couldn’t possibly license a Dylan song for this, but did they have to go with Melanie?  “Brand New Key” Melanie?  I don’t have any issue with Melanie, but I never would have chosen her to be the “voice of revolution”.  Karen Carpenter may have been a bolder choice.

Anthony Quinn plays a liberal professor who is the only college president the students will accept after they oust the old one.  No surprise, but the students turn on him when he is unable to push through all of their demands.  To be fair, Quinn plays his actual age and it often comes up in dialogue.

His co-star is Ann-Margret.  I have seen her do well in other movies, so I am confused by how she barely phones it in here.  She is Quinn’s lover and former student.  She doesn’t exactly look too old to be in this May/December romance, but she acts like it, slinking around in a manner that is less “free-love hippy” and more “Vegas sexy”.  It rings as false as every one of her line readings, all of which she delivers with dead eyes.  It is a singularly bad performance.

As for the dialogue, most of it is stock slogans peppered with cries like “right on!”  Though stilted, some of the dialogue still has some snap to it, such as this exchange: “I remember him.  He was black!”  “George, he still is”

R.P.M. is a movie with its heart in the right place, but it misses the mark.  On the surface, it demonstrates an intention to spark dialogues between generations, races and income brackets.  Unfortunately, in this film about what happens when the anti-establishment becomes the establishment, it ends up feeling like another lecture about these kids nowadays.  

Dir: Stanley Kramer

Starring Anthony Quinn, Ann-Margret, Paul Winfield

Watched on Indicator/Powerhouse blu-ray