Basically, I love this movie. I especially like the Title Song.
In my opinion, it's a very enjoyable movie. It's a nostalgic flashback to the 60s. It's fun to see a very young Susan St. James, who later became famous in McMillan and Wife.
The movie deals with adolescent girls in a Catholic school who, at the urging of a young, liberal nun named Sister George, decide to attend a co-educational, Inter-denominational Christian Youth Rally in California. The movie never deals with the rally. It deals with the trip. During the trip, the girls deal with the usual problems of teenagers, including boys.
Sister George has several battles with the older, more stoic Mother Superior.
During the trip, the girls learn about themselves, Sister George has to come to terms with her own doubts about herself, and the Mother Superior is confronted with her own self-doubts.
The trip enlightens everyone - even Sister George. At the beginning, she is convinced that she alone is enlightened and all the other nuns are in the dark ages. She seems to take it upon herself to enlighten them. The girls at the school see her as a groovy nun. To them, she's a friend. That will hurt Sister George during the course of the trip.
The trip isn't an all-serious social study. There is a lot of comedy on the way. There are two partners in crime; girls who love Sister George are constantly causing headaches for themselves and Mother Superior. In an early scene, they blow up the lab. Sister George taught them the dangers of combining certain common household chemicals because a bomb could be the result and they tested the theory. In another scene, they collect money from the girls parties at St. Frances Academy at night. The party is complete with school-forbidden record players, speakers, and, of course, rock music. This forces Mother Superior to shut down what she calls St. Frances A Go-Go. The funniest scene is a punishment from Mother Superior for another one of the many problems the two girls cause during the trip. The punishment is for the two of them to wash the bus. The girls spot a truck wash on the property where they are and decide to use it - despite the fact that the attendant is out to lunch. One girl drives the bus while the other tries operating the machinery. Neither notice that the bus windows are all open.
The only thing that I thought was totally illogical was the scene where movie Indians attacked the bus. Why would they have attacked the bus? They knew they were doing a movie and only an idiot would know that the bus didn't belong in that scene. So why scare the girls half to death and risk your own life attacking it? The scene where the bus is stopped on the tracks with the train coming is predictable, but much more believable than the attacking Indians.
All-in-all, the movie is a fun romp through the 60s with girls who are trying to find out who they are and where they belong in the world. Oh, and there are also two nuns who discover that they too need to find out who they are and where they belong.
