Hal Ashby’s Shampoo (1975) is the one about George (Warren Beatty, co-writer and producer of the film), a self-absorbed hairdresser who fornicates with a lot of women, including the wife, the daughter and the mistress of an unsuspecting millionaire (Jack Warden)!

A seriocomic, less than credible loser is what this is, since, for one thing, who knows why the women acted by Julie Christie, Lee Grant and Goldie Hawn are so gaga over handsome but dull George?  For another, the film has a political dimension, but Beatty and Ashby understand nothing about . . . well, politics.  Here, sexual hedonists, especially prosperous ones, allowed Richard Nixon to gain the White House in 1968, or saw to it that he did.  That is, they were less concerned about the country than about their own pleasure and satisfaction and material privilege.

A fatuous message.

Cover of Shampoo