Roadieby Anonymous

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February 29, 2004: As a person with a nervous disposition who has enough trouble setting through many movies once, the ultimate tribute I can give this great ?on the road? rock?n?roll saga is that I watched it numerous times when it was on cable in 1981, I have watched it several dozens of times on VHS, and now that it?s on DVD, I have watched it several times again. You can put a lot of mileage on this road movie. The film has a rock?n?roll backdrop?a backdrop we rarely see from the workingman?s eye the way we do here. The movie gives us what amounts to real-world views of several 70?s favorites (Meatloaf, Alice Cooper, Blondie, etc.). It has a great premise, the howling self-reliant ?Everything Works If You Let It? theme. It also enjoys a background soundtrack that fires on all twelve cylinders. But what keeps me watching the film is that it is really funny in an honest, straight-forward way that we have enjoyed far too seldom since Hollywood started grinding out its cookie-cutter farces in the wake of ?Airplane.? The dual surprises of the film are the really solid performances put in by Alice Cooper and Meatloaf in their respective roles as rock star and roadie. I am unqualified in my admiration of this movie, but I will tightly qualify the people to whom I would suggest the film. This is a ?cult? movie in the most real sense of the word and anyone who is made nervous by rock music, farce that is outside of the ?Scary Movie? mainstream, or three-hundred pound leading men (Meatloaf) should avoid this movie at all costs. Also, there is a certain good ol? boy mentality at work here that will not play for some parts of the audience. But to the core audience of the film, these are not qualifications, they are recommendations. The thing I am saddest about is that the movie?s soundtrack is no longer available. The soundtrack was worth having simply for the long and messy ?Brainlock? which plays during one of the few really funny car chases in the history of film.

This review was written about the DVD Wide Screen / Pan & Scan edition.