Great soundtrack, great visuals, somewhat confusing and disappointing storyline.

I always thought this was Neil Diamond's best work. He sang the soundtrack, and it's filled with great songs that he did exceptionally well.

The photography is beautiful and the scenes as mellow as you can find: a seagull gracefully gliding through the air surrounded by beautiful seascapes, sunsets, billowy clouds.....just magnificent scenery.

On the negative side is the usual New Age "look within yourself" theology. This is pure Secular Humanism. I say this because some people thought this was a Christian film and it is not. It only confuses people because there are analogies that could easily apply to Jesus, to the Pharisees and to Heaven itself. It was a bunch of mixed messages but author Richard Bach, from whose book this movie is based on, leaves no doubt near the end of the movie - or the screenwriters did, if they changed his book.

Still, a peaceful, calming movie that is unique.

JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL is a film about a bird and his philosophical musings. As he flies about, he wonders if there's more to life than just eating fish heads, how high he can fly and is there some special purpose to life--all in a live-action two-hour film!

Yes, this is #253 of why you should hate the 1970s--right between the song "Muskrat Love" and Richard Nixon! Okay, there really is no such list--but if there was, this film would be on it! That's because this is a god-awful film that was actually embraced by "with it" people and made the book a huge best-seller and the film a must-see. And to make it worse, the film is so deadly serious and tries so hard to be philosophical--while all it really consists of is a seagull flying about as inane dialog blares on the screen. Could this get any worse?! Well, yes, because while the music does sound lovely, Neil Diamond also sings several songs that made "Heartlight" (sure to be included if there was a "reasons to hate the 1980s" list) seem hard-edged!

So what positive things do I have to say about the film? Well, the cinematography is lovely and must have been spectacular on the big screen. Also, when Neil Diamond isn't singing, the music is lovely. However, with two hours to the film, these reasons become irrelevant after just a few minutes as the rest is just a ponderous pile of....well,... guano. And the fact that so many once-respected actors LOVED the project and agreed to do voices for it is a testament to the power of mood altering drugs and hippie psychology!!

Harry Medved included this in his book "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time". While I have disagreed with some of his choices, I can heartily agree that this film merited, no DEMANDED, inclusion!

In summation, I'd rather eat glass than see it again! It's THAT bad!!!

For years, I've wanted to see this movie and it's eluded me. I shop at The Exchange stores often and the one in Monroeville had one of the Warner Archive burn on demand disks. I watched it like, well, a seagull for about a year. It was $12. Surely I wasn't going to spend so much money on Johnathan Livingston Seagull, long derided as one of the worst movies ever, one of only four movies that Roger Ebert would ever walk out on (the others are Caligula, The Statue and Tru Loved) and a movie I learned about from The Fifty Worst Films of All Time.

Yeah, I like pain. Bring it on, seagull.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull (James Franciscus) is trying to up his speed and break the 60 mile per hour barrier, but the Elders of his flock - hey there, Hal Holbrook's voice - shame him for even trying while Neil Diamond sings over his efforts.

He is now an outcast, flying alone, when he meets a series of mysterious seagulls who let him know that he is unique and should be proud. Johnathan becomes a mentor to the other birds who have no one to share their gifts with.

Juliet Mills plays Johnathan's love interest, who is known as The Girl. And Richard Crenna is in here too as our hero's father.

Director Hall Bartlett discovered the book when he was getting his haircut. Delaring, "I was born to make this movie," he won the property from author Richard Bach for $100,000 and half the profits, which makes me assume that the Bach's estate just got $6 from my DVD purchase and yet he still hasn't made all that much.

Yes, this was directed by the same man who made Zero Hour!

And yet, it barely made back its budget.

Maybe all the lawsuits helped.

Bach sued Paramount Pictures before the film's release because the movie was different than the book and the judge ordered Bartlett to revise the movie before it could be released. The major issue was a scene where a hawk (voiced by the director) attacks Johnathan.

Then, Neil Diamond sured because five minutes of his songs were cut. He also demanded the credit "Music and songs by Neil Diamond." Diamond "vowed never to get involved in a movie again unless I had complete control," then made The Jazz Singer seven years later.

Then director Ovady Julber sued, claiming that the movie stole from his 1936 film La Mer. There was no trial, as cultural use of the film had taken away any common-law copyright the movie had, which seems like a totally BS legal decision, but hey - I write about Spanish horror movies with lots of breasts and blood so the law is way out of my sphere of influence.

The opening credit of this film reads, "To the real Jonathan Livingston Seagull who lives within us all." I advise that this is the exact moment that you begin whatever substances you plan to get you through this.

As for Richard Bach, he met his second wife Leslie Parrish while making this movie, leaving his first wife - who typed all of his aviation books - and six children, not seeing them for many years. Beyond her production job, Parrish was responsible for the seagulls and had to keep them in her room at the Holiday Inn. When Bach and Bartlett started to fight, she was the mediator between them. Sadly, her credit for the movie was just a researcher, which seems like complete malarky.

Parish would play a major role in Bach's next two books, The Bridge Across Forever and One, which pwas all about Bach's concept of soulmates. They divorced in 1997, so maybe his theory wasn't so perfect. Who can say?

In 2014, there would be another chapter added to the book. Nobody thought to film that.

This is totally going to be the movie that I will use to chase people out of my house from now on. Except that, like all bad movies, I love it. I adore every second of this schmaltzy up with people movie that just had birds staring at the screen while actors try to make magic of the script. I look forward to many, many viewings of this movie along with many, many hangovers to follow.

Join me, won't you?