Curator Watchlist
A sharp, very ’70s satirical comedy about sex, vanity, and the rot under California cool. It’s looser and more episodic than plot-driven, but Hal Ashby’s direction and Warren Beatty’s shamelessly self-mocking performance make it a smart time capsule with real bite.
Where to watch: Buy
Tue · 1h 50m
Director: Hal Ashby
Starring: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn
On Election Day, 1968, irresponsible hairdresser and ladies' man George Roundy is too busy cutting hair and dealing with his girlfriends and mistress Felicia Karpf, whose husband Lester is having an affair with his ex-girlfriend Jackie.
Hal Ashby
Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn
A sharp, very ’70s satirical comedy about sex, vanity, and the rot under California cool. It’s looser and more episodic than plot-driven, but Hal Ashby’s direction and Warren Beatty’s shamelessly self-mocking performance make it a smart time capsule with real bite.
Shampoo is one of those movies that feels like it’s drifting until you realize the drift is the point. Set on the eve of Nixon’s election, it turns a Beverly Hills hairdresser’s endless romantic chaos into a portrait of a country sliding from permissiveness into cynicism. The film is funny, but the comedy is laced with embarrassment, self-delusion, and a constant sense that everyone is performing for everyone else.
Warren Beatty is perfectly cast as a man who thinks desire is a personality. He moves through the film with the confidence of a movie star and the intelligence of someone always one step behind his own impulses, which is exactly what the role needs. Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn, and Lee Grant give the movie its bite, each bringing a different angle on privilege, frustration, and emotional gamesmanship.
Hal Ashby keeps the whole thing airy and observational, so the satire never hardens into sermonizing. What lingers is the mood: glamorous surfaces, political unease, and a feeling that the party is ending even if nobody wants to say it out loud. It’s messy, funny, and more revealing than its breezy setup suggests.
Patrick Willems (4★) · 933 likes
"Let's face it, I fucked 'em all. That's what I do" - the ultimate Warren Beatty line of dialogue
demi adejuyigbe · 802 likes
WARREN BEATTY: Well I fool around sometimes. I do. When a girl seduces me and tells me all these hot stories and dirty things and tells me how much she wants to suck on me and take my shoes off and licks my feet and touches me. When I’m in a limousine, she takes all of her clothes. The limo driver said, what is going on? And she started sucking me on the way to Mr. Koon's house. And I… more
nora (4★) · 458 likes
my warren beatty fucks? double feature: BONNIE & CLYDE: warren beatty can't fuck SHAMPOO: warren beatty fucks (everyone, all the time, god help him)
russman (3★) · 410 likes
Words of advice: never get a haircut from a person with a bad haircut
zoë rose bryant (4★) · 341 likes
the plot of this movie is pretty much just “everyone wants to fuck warren beatty,” and it’s perfect
Another Hal Ashby film that mixes comedy, sadness, and social observation with a loose, character-first rhythm.
Ashby’s deadpan sense of American absurdity and social performance carries over in a very different key.
A sprawling ensemble portrait of America’s self-mythology, vanity, and political undercurrents.
A shaggy, ironic 1970s Los Angeles story where charm and cynicism constantly collide.
A loose, character-driven study of male drift, vice, and emotional emptiness in the 1970s.
A cruel, funny look at selfish desire and romantic delusion, with a similarly acidic edge.
A defining American film about sexual confusion, generational drift, and suburban malaise.
A key precursor to the era’s sexual-comedy mode, probing liberation, vanity, and social performance.
A sharper, darker companion piece about male desire, emotional immaturity, and gender politics.
For viewers drawn to ensemble behavior and stylized social unease, though in a more expressionist register.
A dry, elegant comedy about selfishness and social masks, with a similarly off-kilter tone.
A later-era look at sexual frustration, family fracture, and the collapse of polite surfaces.
sexual politics, infidelity, self-absorption, political disillusionment, Hollywood-era satire, gender dynamics, class and privilege, late-1960s social change
1970s, satire, ensemble comedy, dramedy, sexual farce, political backdrop, Los Angeles, counterculture hangover, relationship chaos, moral ambiguity