SOURCE: Westerbeck, Colin L., Jr. Review of Taking Off, by Milos Forman. Commonweal 94, no. 11 (21 May 1971): 262-63.

In the following excerpt, Westerbeck offers a negative assessment of Taking Off, noting that the film's ending is “completely arbitrary.”

Like most films about the youth culture, Taking Off should be called Ripping Off. Director Milos Forman doesn't seem to have been satisfied with the usual cynicism of exploiting teenagers merely as paid admissions to his film: he's also exploited them as extras in the film. Taking Off begins in a rehearsal hall where some impresarios of rock are auditioning hundreds of spaced-out, untalented teeny boppers. As the more pathetic auditions were interspliced through the first part of the film, I began wondering how Forman tempted all those girls to make fools of themselves this way. Did he perhaps lead them all to believe these filmed auditions would be their big chance...