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Just perfect...

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This a morality tale about what happens to you if you're a hop-head bum with too much money. Though I very much doubt the producers saw it that way. There are things to like about this movie. The scenery, at least in the first half, is stunning. And some of the sound track (Steppenwolf, Hendrix) is good. In 1969 I was a freshman at Oxford, I thought it was crap back then. Inspired by Peter Fonda's recent remarks I just (June 2018) watched it again and (unsurprisingly) it's got no better. (Spoilers) Two layabout drug dealers (Fonda, Hopper) make a big score, then they buy a couple of motor bikes that look a bit more than they can handle, especially when under the influence of weed. Both the bikes stay implausibly clean, bright and shiny for the rest of the movie. From then on it's a road film, they pick up one bum and drop him off in a hippy commune. Cut to some skinny-dipping scenes. Then driving on, and finding themselves accidentally (probably too hopped up to notice) an unscheduled part of a town parade they get gaoled, but miraculously the cops are too stupid to find their stash of money or dope. In the hoosegow they meet the town drunk (Nicholson) and in the morning they set off together on their way to New Orleans. Stopping off at a diner, just the sight of them pisses off the local law (and as Barry Norman used to say "And Why Not?"). They leave. Queue some portentous dialogue about advanced space aliens being in control. Being of no further use, the Nicholson character is conveniently bumped off by some hillbilly Trump supporters with baseball bats, our two heroes then bike on to Louisiana where they visit a brothel but are too stoned to get their rocks off. And finally (they probably couldn't think of another way to end this nonsense) Hopper flips the bird at a couple of confederate deplorables and understandably they blow his head off. Which is what I'd wanted to do from the first minute. They kill Fonda too in the final scene and I liked that even better. In fact I cheered. So by the end, it's a feel-good movie. Not as good as Death Wish but it has its moments.

I remember seeing this movie @ the old Visulite Theater just down the street from Leo's deli.Lots of paranoia and angst during that time. Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson both were great in their roles, Peter Fonda not so much.I swear that when we were all leaving the theater a pick-up truck drove by and it backfired and we all jumped in surprise.We were there.

I try so, so hard to enjoy "classic" movies, I really do. But I just can't get why everyone's so fussed about this mess. Low-budget, quirky films can be done really well. So why wasn't this? Half of it feels like an extended music video, while the other half is an incomprehensible series of so-called "events" that lead to nothing. Every time I felt like something might happen in the plot, it just... didn't. When people say that this is classic, I think they're just referring to the feeling it gets across. Sure, it vaguely sends out a message about corporate America and how skewed their idea of freedom is, and it definitely drives the whole drug culture point home, but what else? There isn't really a plot in sight, and since it's completely lacking in artistic merit, it isn't effective overall. Weird editing and rock music doesn't equal a good movie, and I can't wrap my head around the appeal. The only person that's really doing any half decent acting in 'Easy Rider' is young Jack Nicholson, playing pretty much every character he played in these days. But of course - as lazy writing leads to lazy plot - he's killed off without an afterthought. You've got no emotional connection to these characters whatsoever, so all I felt when he died was disappointment, as I thought that maybe his introduction to the film was finally the end of the tiring exposition. After the novelty of the rebellious music and explicit scenes wears off, what are you left with? You're left with this: a badly edited, poorly acted, lazily written "classic" just waiting for nostalgic people to come along and tell everyone how great it is. Almost every single character in the movie is annoying and two-dimensional, never developed further than the occasional weed-hazed angsty comment or the edgy, innovative edits that signify... something, maybe. Don't even get me started on the ending. Without the development of tension - not a single bit - Billy and Wyatt's deaths are really just a relief. Finally, it's over! After an hour and a half of cheesy montages and misplaced avant garde scenes, poorly disguised excuses to use some European-style artsy camera-work, I couldn't care less that they're killed. The first time I saw this and the final credits rolled up on screen, I couldn't help but laugh: was that seriously the end!? Clearly the lack of direction just got too much for them to handle, so they washed it all away with a half-baked attempt at a meaningful ending. The stagnant acting from Fonda and frankly irritating performance from Hopper add precisely nothing to their murder, and the fact that people actually thought this was anything but rubbish when it came out baffles me. Basically, I think this film's success is due only to the state of America and New Hollywood cinema at the time. Once the Hayes rule was abandoned, censorship thrown to the wind, everything was exciting - drugs, sex, alternative lifestyles, motorbikes... And that's all this film is, a montage of youth appeal and trying too hard, while simultaneously coming across like no effort was put into its production at all. Oh well. At least it's got some Hendrix in there.

When watching a film I can sometimes ascertain how much I will like it within the first 5 or 10 minutes; I hated Easy Rider from the start and given its 'classic' status I hoped that it would improve as things progressed. Sadly, it remained bad from start to finish...Let's look at the plot for a minute; 2 hippies pull up at a petrol station, do some coke and move on, they then pick up a hitchhiker and stop at some random place and have some food and then move on again.Later in the film our 2 hippies pick up lawyer George Hanson (Jack Nicholson) who decides to tag along on their road trip to get to the Mardi Gras. At this point the boredom and pointlessness of the film had almost wore me out, but I persevered hoping that it would improve as it went along, but sadly it never did.The general narrative showed Hopper and Fonda in a drug-induced stupor and after watching this film I couldn't help but wonder if they were in the same state when they produced this mess. To me this just felt like a private joke between Fonda and Hopper that just didn't transfer well to audiences. The film seemed to veer from one pointless scene to another without offering any humour, insight or good dialogue. Most of the film was painful and boring to sit through and I struggled making it to the end (even though it was only 90 minutes long). What makes it worse is what follows later in the film; Nicholson's character gets beaten to death and although attempts are made later to 'make' something of it, it still strangely felt rather unceremonious. The scenes after this are just plain bizarre and Fonda's glib comment at the end explaining the pointlessness of everything that they had endured might have worked better if the whole film hadn't have felt so pointless - for me there was an unintended irony here.Despite reasonable performances from Hopper, Fonda, and Nicholson this to me felt like a really bad private joke between Fond and Hopper and the whole film was just an embarrassment from start to finish. The bizarre narrative, lack of insight into any of the characters and mind-numbingly boring story made this a rather challenging 90 minute viewing experience. It's cult status and its grandiose status amongst critics and IMDb members alike is something that is as much of a mystery to me as the film itself.