Film

Hair

Milos Forman's 1979 film adaptation of the counterculture musical. Claude, a drafted Oklahoma rancher, falls into New York's hippie underground days before shipping out. It's exuberant, occasionally chaotic, alive with colour and the conviction that a generation could change the world. For anyone curious about what the '60s felt like, or how musicals can capture a moment.

TMDb rating3.7

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love musicals where the songs spill out of the streets and the politics stays loud, messy and sincerely hopeful, the way 1970s counterculture films often felt before they grew polished.

Skip it if you want tight plotting or a steady emotional arc, since this one wanders through set pieces and jumps between tones, and at over two hours that looseness can wear thin.

What it asks of you: It runs a little over two hours and rarely sits still, so expect a shaggy, episodic rhythm that rewards patience more than focus and swings between goofy and earnest.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Hairspray2007

A similar explosion of joy disguised as entertainment. Divine's bombastic generosity and the film's absolute commitment to celebrating outsiders and misfits—it shares Hair's belief that kindness and music can remake the world.

But Waters' trash aesthetics and John Travolta in a fat suit might feel dated, or the relentless positivity might wear thin if you're after something darker.

Hairspray poster

Dreamgirls2006

A musical with genuine stakes. The glamour and the music are real, but so is the cost—ambition, heartbreak, the machinery grinding people down. It has Hair's scale and spectacle without the naïveté.

But It's a tighter, more dramatically contained story. If you're after the anarchic joy and sprawl of Hair's world, this feels more controlled and less reckless.

Dreamgirls poster

Godspell1973

Another late-counterculture musical that finds the sacred in community and play. It's earnest without being preachy, and gorgeously weird—a parade of colour and meaning on the streets of Manhattan, very much Hair's spiritual cousin.

But The religious framing might alienate you if you're not interested in that particular conversation, and the whimsy occasionally outpaces emotional weight.

Godspell poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Hair

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Moonlight2016

Both are about the search for belonging and identity outside family. Hair assumes that search will be joyful; Moonlight knows it will be painful. Both are necessary truths.

Formally radical in ways Hair is not, but spiritually adjacent. A film about outsiders finding tenderness in unlikely places, about love that exists outside society's permission. It trusts its audience to feel things without spelling them out.

But It's quiet where Hair is loud, intimate where Hair is public, and deals in silence and implication rather than song and declaration. It demands patience and rewards it, but the reward is not joy—it's understanding.

Moonlight poster
More like this (7)

Room Service1938

A chaotic musical comedy where bohemians collide with establishment money—the same collision that drives Hair, just in a Manhattan hotel instead of boot camp. Effervescent and uncontainable.

But It's primarily a farce. If you're watching for emotional depth or character development, this will feel inconsequential beside Hair's genuine tenderness.

Room Service poster

The Rocky Horror Picture Show1975

Transgressive, sexual, radically unconcerned with mainstream approval. Like Hair, it's a musical that makes the audience complicit, turning watching into participation and celebration into defiance.

But The humour is deliberately crude and sexual in ways that won't land for everyone. It's also far darker and more nihilistic than Hair's optimism.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show poster

A Chorus Line1985

Another Broadway-to-film adaptation that captures the energy and specificity of a particular community. Less countercultural than Hair, but equally alive to the idea that showing up and being seen matters.

But It's smaller in scope and ambition—more intimate, less revolutionary. You're watching dancers audition, not watching a generation reimagine itself.

A Chorus Line poster

Singin' in the Rain1952

The greatest musical ever made. It has Hair's infectious certainty that a song can make anything bearable, and the same physical exuberance—bodies in space, joy as a kind of resistance.

But It's from another era entirely, and its concerns are romantic rather than political. Some will find it slight, though they'll be wrong.

Singin' in the Rain poster

Mamma Mia!2008

Pure musical escapism. ABBA songs in the sun on a Greek island. It has Hair's unironic commitment to joy and its faith that a good song makes everything better, whatever the situation.

But It's shallower than Hair by design—no politics, no generational stakes, just pleasure. If you need substance, this will feel aggressively frivolous.

Mamma Mia! poster

Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie2016

Both celebrate outsiders, misfits, and the refusal to be normal. But where Hair is about the joy of breaking free, this is about the tragedy of being unable to grow up. Same impulse, opposite outcome.

A film about staying young and staying part of the counterculture when the culture has moved on and you haven't. It's what Hair's generation looks like at 70—still dressed, still fighting, still ridiculous and still loved.

But It's British, arch, and cruelly funny about its characters in ways Hair never is. It's also painfully dated in its own way. If you're not already familiar with the original series, you'll be lost.

Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie poster

O Fantasma2000

Both ask what happens when you decide society's rules don't apply to you—when you opt out entirely. Hair imagines this as a love story; this film imagines it as a kind of beautiful dissolution. One is utopian, one is tragic, but they're asking the same question.

A transgressive Portuguese film about a gay man living completely outside society by choice. It's about the eros and terror of total freedom, without sentiment or judgment. Visually stunning, formally rigorous, morally complicated.

But It's sexually explicit and deals with theft and self-destruction. It's not interested in making its protagonist likeable, and the film itself is bleak and unsentimental. Very far from Hair's humanism.

O Fantasma poster

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