Taking Off (film)

Plot

One evening Larrie and Lynn Tyne find their daughter Jeannie gone. Viewers know she is attending an audition, clips from which (including such artistes as Carly Simon and Kathy Bates) recur throughout the film. The Tynes ring the Divitos, with whose daughter Jeannie is meant to be, but learn she has disappeared on her own. Enlisting their friends Tony and Margot, the two men search the neighbourhood bars while the women stay by the phone and exchange sexual confidences. When the men return dead drunk, Jeannie reappears. But she vanishes again and next day Larrie goes into the city to find her. There he meets Ann Lockston, also searching for a stray daughter, who tells him about a self-help group for parents in their predicament.

When the police call the Tynes to say their daughter is arrested 300 miles upstate for stealing, the two rush there, only to find it is the Divitos' girl who gave a false name. On the way back they stop off at a hotel where Ike and Tina Turner are playing; and a drunk Lynn is followed to their room by an amorous stranger, unaware that in the dark Larrie has already gone to bed. After the stranger has fled, Lynn tries some of the tips Margot confided to her.

Later, back in New York, Larrie and Lynn go to a formal dinner of the self-help group, after which marijuana joints are handed round and a young man called Schiavelli instructs the parents how to smoke them. Happily high, Larrie and Lynn take Ann and her husband Ben back to their home for more drinks and a game of strip poker. As the naked Larrie is on the table singing Libiamo ne' lieti calici, Jeannie reappears again. After Larrie suggests that she brings the boy she goes off with home to dinner, the young man turns up and proves to be an intelligent and wealthy musician. When he declines to play for them, Larrie entertains the four with Stranger in Paradise.

Awards

The film won the Grand Prix at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival.

DVD

Taking Off was released to Blu-ray Disc on by British company Park Circus on November 7, 2011 as a Region-2 widescreen Blu-ray Disc and by Gaumont (with Carlotta Films as home video distributor) on March 23, 2011 as a Region-0 widescreen Blu-ray Disc.