Billings
Oh come on. That can't be all right.

I'm going to have to watch it again.

crote
Well, that's certainly one reading of the film, although I'm not entirely sure where the "treats women like shit" part comes from.

For me, the movie is about the classic upper middle class existential crisis of not wanting to be another mope in the suburbs, and the sad realization that daring to be different might not actually be any better. It's delightfully depressing.

baleen


Well, he takes out a perfectly nice girl on a date and treats her without the slightest shred of decency. She is taken to a strip club and hurts her to such a degree that she begins to cry. If I was required to finish a date with a completely self-absorbed person who appeared to hate my guts, I would be pretty hurt myself. The reason he does this, we assume, is because he is angry at his upper middle class parents arranging a date with him (with one of the most drop dead beautiful women in the world, mind you)-- he must revolt against such dreadful impediments on his life! Boo hoo!

After he realizes the folly of his ways, he has a change of heart and falls madly in love with her. This is sort of a precarious kind of love, as he is pretty aggressive in his pursuit of her. Even after she tells him to go away, he continues haranguing her, and more or less stalks her until he is told to piss off by her father. That's kind of fucked up.

So he ruins her wedding. That's fine because middle class people didn't actually want to get married in the 60's. As I said, the whole movie is slightly redeemed in the last moments, where they realize what they've done and what they're doing. We are left to believe that this relationship isn't going anywhere either.

Still I don't think Hoffman's character is sympathetic, and I don't particularly give a shit that he just wants to lay in a pool instead of work for a plastics company.

crote
You should probably watch the movie again, as you seem to have a pretty stilted memory of the way things go down.

Ben acts like a dick on the date because Mrs. Robinson threatened him with grave consequences should he ever take Elaine out, not because of anything to do with his parents.

He does do some stalking, true, but it's probably the most effective example of stalking in cinematic history, as Elaine pretty quickly realizes she loves him, too. She's more or less forced to marry Fratty McDoucheface.

Ben spends the summer being a lazy SOB not because that's his dream, but because that's the only alternative to getting stuck in a job or whatever that he doesn't want to be stuck in. When he actually identifies a goal (Elaine), he becomes the consummate man of action. Of course, in the end he realizes that this dream is potentially no better than the fate he was trying to avoid.

Ennui ensues.

FABIO2
My highschool film study teacher wanted to kill himself when our entire class shouted "Wayne's World!" during this part.

Quad9Damage
These five stars are for the clip and also for Wayne's World 2; it had an almost shot-for-shot spoof of this scene. I especially loved the gag with the two churces.