Watch Lost in America For Free

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Excellent adaptation.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Son of a bitch, that was some ending.Albert Brooks' "Lost in America" takes two middle-class yuppies (Brooks and Julie Hagerty) and sends them out on the open road to "find themselves". Think "Easy Rider" with everything going comically wrong. Hagerty loses their life savings in Las Vegas, and the beleaguered couple find themselves in minimum-wage jobs somewhere in Arizona.Brooks zeroes in his biting wit on middle-class America (and the general malaise therein), fashioning a droll satire (of the highest order) in the process. Brooks' neurotic personality is played to the hilt, infusing his scenes with off-the-wall energy, while Hagerty's mousy bewilderment makes for a great foil character. And then there's Garry Marshall in a restrained bit performance that's just comedy gold. But Brooks takes their story of hopelessness and despair, and brings it full circle, making the movie a wry comment on the romantic notion of fleeing suburban ennui in favor of an idealistic trip across the country. Four my money, as good as the preceding running time is, that ending makes the movie.8/10

A Yuppie couple leaves its jobs, liquidates its assets, and buys an RV, intent on living on the road like their idols in "Easy Rider." Things don't go as planned because of a single event. That single event is so contrived and unbelievably stupid that one doesn't feel any sympathy for the couple. However, one can laugh at them. Brooks could be Woody Allen's irritable cousin in terms of his neurotic behavior and impatience. Like Allen's films prior to "Annie Hall," this one is episodic, and some of the episodes are quite funny. It doesn't quite come together as a satisfying whole, but the journey is worth taking, and Brooks knows not to overstay his welcome.

SPOILER ALERT! Surely one of the funniest films of the 1980s. Yuppies Albert Brooks & Julie Hagerty decide to drop out of society, buy a Winnebago and hit the road. Things go from hopeful to hopeless pretty quickly. Leaving LA, they get as far as Las Vegas where Hagerty gets caught up in a mean, and unlucky, gambling streak. The couple soon realize that the materialistic life they fled was actually good for them. Brooks is brilliantly funny and the script (by Brooks & Monica Johnson) is chock full of now classic scenes: Brooks & Hagerty checking into a hotel's "junior" bridal suite; Hagerty getting a job at a fast food joint called Der Wienersnitzl; Brooks blowing up at his boss and informing him that their "toupee secret" is off. This remains Brooks's best film, so rich and so telling. Brooks is very well matched by the slightly off-kilter Hagerty and the supporting cast includes Michael Greene as Brooks's insensitive boss and a very funny Gary Marshall as a befuddled casino manager.

It started out with such promise. I love Brooks' humor. Most people I know don't, but the idea that this yuppie was going to engineer a "find yourself" tour of America for himself and his unwilling wife in a Winnebago held out the promise of a rich minefield of comedy to come. After Julie Hagerty's character loses the entire nest egg in their first stop in Vegas, I couldn't watch the movie anymore and I walked out by the time they got to the Grand Canyon.I don't know if it was just my disappointment at Albert Brooks' use of such an obvious situational device as the loss of all the money to set up the rest of the film, or my own sense of unquenchable murderous rage at the wife for having been so weak and stupid to lose every dime and completely undermine the rest of their lives, but I could not watch another frame of this movie, and have not gone back to it to this day. Once you lose heart, once you can no longer maintain the willing suspension of disbelief, you are through with a film. "Defending Your Life" was so brilliant. This was just awful.