Well, it's obvious that Romero has talent outside of the limited confines of a single farmhouse in the remote inner country of Pennsylvania, but he's also entirely reliant on a script being written for him to apply that skills effectively. The script by Rudolph Ricci is a half-formed idea about the younger generation wanting more and the idea of settling (the title comes from a line late in the film), but characterization is way too thin, it meanders for long stretches, and the final point isn't really supported by much of what came before it. Performances aren't great, but Romero's camera is allowed interesting compositions from time to time while the finale's efforts to bring everything together (what little there is) feels genuine, if empty.

Chris (Raymond Laine) is something of a drifter who comes to Pittsburgh, near his parent's house, just because he kind of wants to. He meets with an old flame at a strip club, Terri (Johanna Lawrence), who tells him that she has a kid that may be his. He also brought his dad, Roger (Roger McGovern) along. At the same time, the movie introduces us to Lynn (Judith Streiner), a model and star of local commercials who is dealing with the end of a relationship. The movie takes a little bit of time to establish these two away from each other, and it's a surprisingly decent effort. It's just the beginning of creating characters, but they're distinctive enough in their broad strokes that it feels like the movie may be going somewhere.

They meet in a bit of a meet cute where she accidentally hits him with a bus station turnstile. She takes him home. They immediately have unprotected sex. He moves in, and that's kind of it for at least half an hour. They mill about. There's some talk about how she might be pregnant. He decides that he wants to write a book. It honestly just meanders around no place for a while. There's a line when Chris is describing what his book is supposed to be about. It's about everything, and nothing. It's a book! That was pretty much what I was thinking a good description of the film could be. After an opening that showed some decent skill and potential, it had just fallen into the squalor of showing "real" stuff.

Romero went on to say that this was his worst film (I still haven't seen his final two dead films, so we'll see if I agree), and he laid blame on the writer, Ricci, abandoning the project part of the way through, not allowing them any rewrites. It would surprise me none at all if much of this film was purely improvised, it feels so loose and pointless.

Chris ends up deciding to get a job, using Lynn's father's name as a reference (did people just not check references in the 70s? I dunno), and getting a job as a copywriter for an advertising firm. He holds it for about a day before quitting because he can't take the monotony and being tied down (though he's been tied down with Lynn for three months by this point, but whatever). She's feeling frustrated because his frustrations are building up on her, and she decides to go and take part in a medical procedure that must be done through back alleys and such.

Now, Romero didn't have a whole lot of ground to play creatively with visually (emphasis on editing more than extreme compositions). I get the sense that it was a bigger, more complicated production than Night of the Living Dead, using far more locations, implying a more ambitious film which, when combined with the need to economize and use less film and time, probably meant that he had less time to try new things. He needed to operate efficiently. That comes out reasonably well with a decently looking picture that even allows for good application of longer takes in some conversations. He manages the shoe-string production well, even if the script is simply too wane to carry much interest.

The one place where Romero gets to shine is near the end with a montage of Chris sitting in the apartment and Lynn going to the procedure that's surprisingly taut. It's good stuff even if, again, it's not really supported by much narratively because the characters are so thin.

So, it's not good. It's really not. The script is mostly a non-entity with actors left largely flagging in the wind, looking for something to do while Romero can't give them much. However, the opening is decent, is finely shot, and Romero gets to flex once late. It's really not good, but it's not completely terrible. There are a couple of small bright spots, and everything in between is more just dull rather than bad.

Low budget and extremely dated. The only reason to watch this is so that you can say you've seen all of George Romero's movies. It's a totally uninteresting time capsule. It's feels like an hour and a half long student film and about as much fun.

THERE'S ALWAYS VANILLA isn't a bad movie; it's slow and mired in the late '60s/early '70s sensibilities- but it's also an accurate snapshot of that period, in Cinematic terms. One can't help but imagine that this one echoes Romero's own Existential Angst at that time: the scenes involving the ad agency execs clearly suggest as much. (And I STILL say that a movie about a group of commercial filmmakers wanting to break away from advertising and make their own movies would be a great idea... Imagine the insights someone like Romero could bring to such a movie...) THERE'S ALWAYS VANILLA, whatever its merits (or lack of same), is evidence enough that Romero as a Filmmaker was capable from early on of making WHATEVER kind of movie he might've WANTED to make- Horror or Western or Contemporary Drama or anything else. (The abortion scene is short but powerful Dramatically.) Romero's movies are always worth a look.