The Sterile Cuckoo (1969)

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

"Go ahead, break my heart!" seems to be the theme for Liza Minnelli's Pookie Adams in this college age love story about a very insecure but likable young lady and her shy, nervous boyfriend (Wendell Burton) whom she goes after with fury the moment she meets him. "Come Saturday Morning" is one of the best movie themes ever, let alone of this "Hair" age drama, and sets up the mood perfectly for the gentle souls whose lives are explored. If Liza had not gone on to play Sally Bowles in "Cabaret", she would have been remembered forever in playing this part, a role filled with even more dimensions than the later role which won her the Oscar. Losing the Oscar for this to Maggie Smith's Jean Brodie, Minnelli is a modern age version of the characters Brodie was teaching in her British private school, so you can watch both films together and see many similar qualities. Burton, seemingly forced into dating the sometimes pesky Pookie, has the less showy role, but he underplays it with great humanity and is equally unforgettable. Excellent direction by Alan J. Pakula helps make the film flow smoothly. Minnelli's performance seems so modern in her energy that you almost expect her to whip out a cellphone and start texting to Burton every two minutes.

I have never seen this movie but I believe it changed my life. As a college freshman in the fall of 1969, I was in a relationship heading into its 2nd year. My friend and I were separated during the week, attending different colleges about a two hour drive apart. We had a tense emotional moment in early November 1969 during a regular weekend visit, resulting in what I thought would be a temporary strain on the relationship. Just a few days later my friend saw this movie and said that it applied to our relationship. The assessment was that we were like the couple in the movie. Things were never the same after that movie viewing, and within six months a relationship I wanted was basically over. I wonder what the chances for relationship mending would have been if the movie's emotional impact had not come so soon after the strain.

I first saw The Sterile Cuckoo my first year in college when I was the same age as the characters. It hit home then but it took 40 years for me to realize the depth and beauty of this simple story of a lost and lonely college freshman girl who tries too hard and a straight-laced college freshman lad. From the opening, this story grabbed my heart and just would not let go. The sound track of Come Saturday Morning by the Sandpipers will echo in my soul for a long long time. The opening of the older, widowed father sending his little girl off to college, wanting just a touch of warmth from her and getting nothing. And then the bittersweet story of Pookie Adams finding her first love and Jerry who was dragged unwillingly into his own first love, discovering each other and the joy and pain, until finally they grow apart. The last scene of this lost and lonely little girl back on the bus with no place to go and no one to love her, her first love standing there with his hands in his pockets watching her go. My heart ripped in pieces. Yes, Pookie was just about as unlikeable as they come but her vulnerability makes you want to hold her close just like Jerry did. I have no idea why Liza Minelli did not win the Oscar in this her first movie. She certainly should have. Yes, the movie has some anachronisms that the young audience of today might find amusing, like dial telephones, but this is a one of a kind experience I would recommend to all.

Liza Minnelli received a well deserved Oscar nomination here as best actress as Pookie Adams. Emotionally detached and socially awkward, Minnelli etched a memorable performance as the young girl reduced to saying anything to garner attention in her long pursuit to be accepted and loved.Co-star and future director, Wendell Burton, is just wonderful as the shy boyfriend who comes to love the way out Kookie.This is truly a wonderful story of maturity gained through love. It would only take an outstanding performance by Maggie Smith in "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" to beat out Minnelli as well as Jane Fonda's tragic Gloria in "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?"Pookie's early scenes as a real lovable nut job are so realistic. Her acting depth is well realized here as she emotionally matures. The ending is definitely a downer but so has been Pookie's very existence. She still has to find herself.