There's a distinctly 1970s hippie vibe to this comedy-drama about a disenchanted student who finds himself among the fringe dwellers who farm marijuana in the Northern California. The charming film, which is studded with great performances, is a definite audience pleaser When a medical student (a sensitive performance
by newcomer Jeremy Strong) receives a failing grade from a demanding professor (played by director and actor Peter Bogdanovich), who just happens to be his father, he drowns his sorrows in a jazz club, where he catches the eye of a sultry singer named Bogart (played by the gorgeous Fairuza Balk).

After a steamy night of drink, drungs and sex, the young man awakens in a hippie commune in the rural community of Humboldt County in Northern California, becoming the reluctant houseguest of a family headed by Brad Dourif (a character actor best known for his performance in "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest"), a physics professor who dropped out of academia decades earlier for a counterculture life of raising and smoking pot. Along with his Earth Mother wife and an extended clan of misfits, the eccentric family adhere to their own non-conformist values while tending to the
"family business".

This creates a dilemma for the young man, who has always followed the traditional path in his life, keeping his own dreams in check. The freedom and exhiliration he experiences among these freethinkers
makes for a life adjustment that is both funny and profound.