User reviews

Sally Field as an older teen named Denise who has run away from her upper-middle class home to be with her hippie boyfriend. This no-holds-barred television movie begins with "Dennie" returning home in the middle of the night: she walks up her block, enters her house while her family is asleep, and climbs into her old childhood bed. Why did she leave in the first place? Her parents and younger sister (drawn as neurotics oblivious to their own family dynamic) are a society-party dream but dysfunctional after the guests have gone home. Despite an odd sequence midway through that has Field running down the street drawing ribbons in the air (she's free!), this is a fairly realistic portrait of life in '70s suburbia. The nature of the relationships is interesting, and the uncompromising ending thoughtful. One of the first films (TV-made or otherwise) to rip the lid off suburban/station-wagon living and its false sense of comfort and security. Field, though overwrought on occasion, is very good, and the well-realized piece has been sharply photographed (by crack cinematographer Russell Metty) and edited. Linda Ronstadt performs two songs on the soundtrack, the title track and "Different Day". *** from ****

I remember seeing this movie when I was very young and there were certain scenes that have stayed with me my entire life. For instance the scene when they are eating other people's garbage and the final scene. So my curiosity got the best of me and I rented this movie from Netflix to see it now as an adult with children (and one grandchild). I wanted to see if it would have the same impact and oddly enough it did.

The acting was relatively good in the movie, the writing a bit weak in certain areas but it had a message and that comes through loud and clear. It actually reminded me a bit of an "After School Special" but that was OK.

It didn't glorify either the parent's side or the "hippie" side. It made you see what was wrong from both ends of the spectrum. Sally Field's did not play a "Gidget" type of part in this movie but I thought she was good.

My real shocker was that David Carradine played her boyfriend. I told my husband this and now he wants to see it for just that reason!

A TV movie with excellent acting and a still timely message. Although the clothes and attitudes are dated the basic dilemma of misunderstanding between the generations is as true today as it was when this is made. Sally is strong in the lead, she was working hard at this time to leave Gidget and the Flying Nun behind which would take a few more years when Sybil moved her to the next level of respect, and captures the difficult transition period between teen rebellion and adult responsibility. Eleanor Parker and Jackie Cooper give good performances even though their characters are drawn in one dimensional tones. Not a great movie but a good one from when network TV tried to tackle controversial topics. Added bonus the soundtrack is by Linda Ronstadt, a rare occurrence.

I was a senior in high school when I saw this and I loved it. I wrote a term paper comparing/contrasting this to "Pilgrim's Progress" (which we had just studied in my English class) and got an "A" from my "hippie" teacher then. I longed to join the "hippie trail" then but didn't because I felt responsible for my younger siblings stuck in an abusive situation with my alcoholic dad. We only had each other. I used to read bus schedules with the dream of leaving.

Everyone is great in this movie. Sally Fields shows growth as an actress from her "Gidget" and "Flying Nun" days. Plus, it really portrays the frustration her parents feel and the difficulties the whole family had in relating to each other.

I remember watching this made for TV movies back in the early 70's when I was about 11 years old. See, at that time I was too young to be a hippie but was old enough to think hippies were "cool", I liked the hair, clothes, etc. Watching this strange little movie made me rethink that position. Sally Field plays "Dennie", a young woman who has run away from home due to the wildly dysfunctional family she has. Eleanor Parker and Jackie Cooper play her screwed up parents who live in a nice house and drink too much. She has a younger sister who wants to be just like Dennie and to escape the weird family dynamics she too starts doing drugs. The movie is hard to watch at times, there are weird "flashback" scenes of when Dennie and her boyfriend, numbly played by David Carradine,out on the road, doing drugs, making love, protesting the war and eating food left on a table at a drive-in (believe it or not, that scene stuck in my mind for years, yuck-eating some strangers left over garbage!!!!!)The film maker tried too hard to be hip and cool with unusual lighting and a weird scene of Dennie writing "Happy" in the air (that scene is truly surreal and has to be seen to be believed), but the message is overall a good one, that drugs and unhappiness just don't happen to people living in the hood, but also to middle class white people.

"Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring" is a sad little movie and unlike most films offers no particular resolution. When the film begins, a wayward daughter returns home after living the life of a hippie/drifter. Denise (Sally Field) is tired of begging and the bohemian life and just wants to be home. However, once there, the many family problems that pushed her out of the house in the first place all slowly come out...such as the drug abusing younger sister, the parents who hate drugs...but drink heavily and more. Overall, the film appears to be about the American Dream...and how it's all, at least according to the movie, a sack of crap.

The film is decent but does suffer from some overacting here and there as well as an unresolved ending. An interesting curio....but not a whole lot more.

After living with hippies in Los Angeles, troubled runaway Sally Field (as Denise "Dennie" Miller) returns home to uptight suburban parents Jackie Cooper and Eleanor Parker (as Ed and Claire). Although the movie's editing and camera-work seem to be simulating drug-induced flashbacks, Ms. Field is apparently very straight (meaning sex and drug free) as the story unfolds. Looking like a poorer post-"Monkees" Peter Tork, truck-jacking David Carradine (as Flack) plays the main boyfriend. We see past glimpses of Field falling into a sex and drugs lifestyle. Then, she discovers the same thing is happening to little sister Lane Bradbury (as Susie)...

In her sandy folk voice, Linda Ronstadt is heard singing non-hits "Different Day" and the title track.

"Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring" catches Field after her "The Flying Nun" (1967-70) series landed in cancellation land; the unusual sitcom and predecessor "Gidget" (1965-66) had made Field a very popular, albeit very wholesome, young television star. She needed a change. With this film, Field began to demonstrate some of the dramatic range everyone noticed by the time "Sybil" (1976) aired. Field shines in an opening "telephone call" monologue, using her voice only. The emotional playing between Field and Mr. Cooper is another highlight. Other than that, this high-rated ABC Tuesday "Movie of the Week" is noisy and ordinary.

***** Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring (2/16/71) Joseph Sargent ~ Sally Field, Jackie Cooper, Eleanor Parker, Lane Bradbury

A young woman runs away from home, and she returns to find the same old dysfunctional family and the same old issues that made her leave. She struggles to resume her place in the family, but she isn't the same person she used to be.

Sally Field is now 70 years old, and Lane Bradbury is 78. This movie gives us a nostalgic look back to the time of hippie culture, but it also shows us that what goes on within families is timeless.

I don't know whether or not Sally Field is proud of this movie, but she should be. I was 14 or 15 when this movie came out on TV and I was deeply affected by it. I grew-up in the suburbs and life during that chaotic and difficult time in America really was like this for suburban teens and teens in general. I saw many, many kids go through similar experiences. Times were changing so drastically that the disconnect between the parent's experiences, lifestyle and ideals and those of their kids spawned the "generation gap". On a personal note, adding to the sadness of watching these kids' experiences was the fact that my older sister (whose nickname was also Deni) and with whom I was very close, was rebelling in painful ways and I was caught in the middle between her and my parents. And yes, my name was Susie as well. Luckily, I was a good kid and I hated what I was witnessing around me and what I saw at the hospitals and lock-up wards of the time, so I went the straight & narrow. Believe it or not, I think this movie helped me. It has stayed with me for almost 40 yrs, so the effect is obvious. A good movie for siblings of teens with problems and a good movie for parents.

These comments come from the memory of seeing this movie when it was first on television. Although it says the movie was made in 1970, it was more like 72-73 when it was aired.

My experience as a teenager in the United States in the late 60's was similar to this movie although I did not grow up in the suburbs. The Vietnam War protests had split the generations. Our parents, who had survived WW2 were grateful for the suburban homes and cars. We teenagers were not going to fight a useless war. In many homes, this led to a deep rift that lasted for years. It was not unusual for young teens to simply leave home. In many cases, it was at the pushing of the parents. (Now as a parent, I would have died of a broken heart had my teens left). This movie depicts one story of a teenager (Sally Field) who leaves home. She experiences a lot of horrors that cause her to return. But she discovers that although she has changed, the home has not.

one of the worst flicks ever made for TV. her acting is atrocious. she is a real creep. watching this mess is like having a tooth pulled without Novocaine. why this ever was put on DVD is beyond me. this horror should have sunk in the swamp waste along with the leeches and snakes. i blew a buck on this mess and trashed it promptly. what a waste of a buck. fields is one person that cannot act. her looks are a retina burning eyesore. why indeed would carradine even think of acting along with her. he was the only redeeming feature in the whole movie. the story line was weak; the plot , silly and the VHS tape it was taken from was a horror in itself. wish i could take all the copies that exit and destroy them. what a blessing for the world!

Wow, I thought I was the only who one was affected by this movie and had some of its scenes stay in my head for 35 years as well. I am referring to Sally Field eating garbage, cutting her hair, the doll house.. those parts must have disturbed me a child and made me remember this for life. I happened upon this on a 6 disc movie compilation, the only other movie I know on it is John Travolta's Boy in the Plastic Bubble. Just seeing this movie again is so amazing since I have had scenes from this movie in my head since I was a kid. This movie is a product of its times and Sally Field is always a pleasure to watch. It's funny how she made two movies, the other Sybil that seem to have disturbed me so much when I was a child. Glad I read these reviews!

The way this is filmed is very strange. The scenes don't make sense. They just filmed the cast doing everyday things like eating without dialogue and once in a while they have an argument or some angst. It doesn't make sense. I don't recommend.

i saw this movie when it first premiered on television in 1970 and every time i see sally field, i remember this movie and her performance and wonder why it's never mentioned in interviews with her. i recently found it on video and it holds up wonderfully after thirty years. i highly recommend it. (i had forgotten, however, that david carradine was in the movie. he is quite good, too.)

The so-called "nuclear family" that America had come to idealize as a result of the post-WW II Baby Boom was eventually exposed as an illusion as a result of the many social upheavals of the 1960s, with many young kids either running away from home to hippie communes or finding solace in the potentially deadly world of drugs because parents either didn't understand, or, even more, didn't want to understand, their offspring. Such was the focus of the above-average 1971 TV movie MAYBE I'LL COME HOME IN THE SPRING, which did a rather good job of showing the downsides of both the counterculture and the typical American "nuclear family." Sally Field, in a role that broke away from her Gidget/Flying Nun persona of the past, stars as a runaway who returns home from a hippie lifestyle after a year in which she has been bruised and scorned by her hippie lover (the late David Carradine). What she finds when she returns home is nothing short of depressing: her parents (Jackie Cooper; Eleanor Parker) still look upon her actions with scorn and disapproval, and yet they too indulge in their own brand of reckless behavior, using over-the-counter pills and alcohol instead of marijuana and methadone. Even more distressing than her parents' behavior is that Field's younger sister (Lane Bradbury) is headed down the same path as she once was, practically being forced down that path by the parents, who act with relentless hypocrisy, unwilling to understand why their offspring have rebelled the way they have.

Though very emblematic of its time, with certain montage sequences and slightly psychedelic flashbacks, making it obviously dated in some ways, MAYBE I'LL COME HOME IN THE SPRING avoids the fate of so many heavy-handed counterculture films by taking an ambivalent approach. The counterculture doesn't exactly get a free pass here, especially given the fact that Carradine's character seems too eerily close to that of Charles Manson, seducing Field and then (tragically) Bradbury in the dark side of hippiedom. Then again, neither does the "nuclear family" structure that Parker and Cooper represent; their ideals are so rigid, and their beliefs and their hypocrisy solidified to such an extent, that they don't see the harm their actions have on their daughters.

Despite a few flaws, MAYBE I'LL COME HOME IN THE SPRING is bolstered by a superb dramatic performance by Field, which presages her later roles in pieces like Sybil, Places In The Heart, and Norma Rae, and two period-era acoustic folk-pop songs sung by Linda Ronstadt. The film also boasts very sympathetic director from Joseph Sargent, whose credits include the underrated 1970 science fiction/suspense drama COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT and the taut (and original) 1974 suspense thriller THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE. Even though it can't help avoid being dated in certain ways, MAYBE I'LL COME HOME IN THE SPRING still stands as a very critical look at the things that broke so many families apart at the end of the 60s and the start of the 70s.

The ABC Movie of the Week was still pretty new in 1970 (I think they started in 1969?) and this was not typical for them as it was not a mystery or supernatural thriller. I too saw this as a child and it left an impression on me as it did for the other posters on here. What none of the other posters mentioned however was that one of the things that gave this movie a special touch of reality was that it was filmed on location is a real suburban home! This made some scenes claustrophobic yet intimate as well. (Many of the TV movies were shot on sterile studio sets). So yeah, I guess the house becomes one of the characters in the movie too. I think with a bigger budget and possibly more "adult" themes or nudity or course language ; this would have made a nice theatrical feature. If you like "Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring" you should check out another movie called "The People Next Door" made the same year. Similar plot yet more gritty and down-beat--it was an "R" rated feature film. As stated above; what a shame that this did not win an Emmy Award that year.