Liza Minnelli...That name conjures up so many images: Her mother, Judy, elegance, beauty, humor, and sometimes pain. Well, she sheds all of them except the last 2. In this role as the odd Pookie Adams, a girl who is afraid of "weirdos" but who in a sense really is, Liza Minnelli has to pull together a wonderful (Academy Award Nominating) part that will tug at your heart and look at the world through HER eyes. Pookie meets Jerry Payne (Wendell Burton) and goes through a couple of sly tricks to make sure that he never forgets her. Jerry falls in love with this strange but lovable girl. That is until her fear of him leaving makes her over-protective and a little pushy. It begins to drive him away. But what movie on teenage lovers is really convincing? Well, these two sure are convincing. Sometimes you just want to strangle Pookie and other times you just want to jump into the screen and hold her close and say "It's gonna be all right". I rated this a 7 because there was something missing and I felt it. But otherwise, Liza Minnelli fans, this is way worth it!

If you only know Liza Minnelli from "Cabaret" and similar movies, then "The Sterile Cuckoo" will be a surprise. Alan J. Pakula's adaptation of John Nichols's novel casts Minnelli - in an Academy Award-nominated role - as a new student in a college who starts up a relationship with another freshman (Wendell Burton). But the relationship turns out to be not as easy as they predicted.

The movie got released a few months after Judy Garland died (and the day of her funeral saw the Stonewall Uprising, precipitating the gay liberation movement). With this movie, Minnelli was starting up a career that would turn out different from her mom's; despite problems along the way, Minnelli has managed to survive. Here she puts on a fine performance, letting the character's multiple dimensions play themselves out onscreen. The movie isn't a masterpiece, but an insightful look at college life during that era. At the very least, you should see it just to see Minnelli in a different kind of role.

"Go ahead, break my heart!" seems to be the theme for Liza Minnelli's Pookie Adams in this college age love story about a very insecure but likable young lady and her shy, nervous boyfriend (Wendell Burton) whom she goes after with fury the moment she meets him. "Come Saturday Morning" is one of the best movie themes ever, let alone of this "Hair" age drama, and sets up the mood perfectly for the gentle souls whose lives are explored. If Liza had not gone on to play Sally Bowles in "Cabaret", she would have been remembered forever in playing this part, a role filled with even more dimensions than the later role which won her the Oscar. Losing the Oscar for this to Maggie Smith's Jean Brodie, Minnelli is a modern age version of the characters Brodie was teaching in her British private school, so you can watch both films together and see many similar qualities. Burton, seemingly forced into dating the sometimes pesky Pookie, has the less showy role, but he underplays it with great humanity and is equally unforgettable. Excellent direction by Alan J. Pakula helps make the film flow smoothly. Minnelli's performance seems so modern in her energy that you almost expect her to whip out a cellphone and start texting to Burton every two minutes.