Steal This Movie

Whatever might be said for or against Abbie Hoffman, the radical founder of the yippies, he wasn’t the glib figure that Vincent D’Onofrio presents him as, in this misshapen and obfuscating biopica picture that invests practically all its intelligence in chronicling how Hoffman’s life was destroyed by the FBI and CIA after he was forced into hiding. The relative candor about the damage wreaked by J. Edgar Hoover is pretty small compensation for the lack of any clear sense of what Hoffman did in the 60s and why it meant something. With Janeane Garofalo as Hoffman’s wife and Jeanne Tripplehorn as his mistress; produced and directed by Robert Greenwald, from a script by Bruce Graham that Paul Krassner should have written. 108 min. (JR) Read more