[American Graffiti] imports more than mere nostalgia for a past: it explores the consequences of technology upon an age that still has the need to understand experience through a mixture of epic, myth, and romance patterns. American Graffiti's achievement—or near-achievement—is that it gives us a chance to satisfy this need, to find these patterns, in a mundane, all-too-familiar mechanized world.

The mythic land of American Graffiti is a country of city streets under the false day of relentless lights, of youths who live on wheels, where even the waitresses are on roller-skates and where all are electronically linked through the pulsating beat of their radios. The music (of the spheres?) is broadcast by Wolfman Jack, the mysterious surrogate god of this neon wasteland. Among its inhabitants are a few adults who are shadow figures, aliens briefly encountered with hostility or indifference by the true "citizens...