Watch The Same River Twice For Free

The greatest movie ever made..!

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, said; "You can never step in the same river twice". He meant that time is always moving, the river flows and is ever-changing. This movie looks back for a group of people and asks them to come to terms with where they are in the river of life relative to their real time spent on the river.The question is - did they ever really leave and what was lost and what was found?There is one character who does not leave and he is the core of the film - the person they left behind. There is a hint of tragedy, which is left unsaid, but may have been part of the earlier film. You cannot help but feel that many would like to go back, but each person in their own way has accepted their path.

Where has the time gone? Those thoughts raced through my mind during this compelling all too brief documentary. Hey, if I had been unable to relate to this who would?Happily, I did and totally enjoyed it. My rebellious contemporaries were fun to observe, then and now, and the film has started some dialog among my long-time friends. While it is striking that two of the five actually had political careers (although small-time), I often wonder how I ended-up seeking the joys (comfort) of a corporate world - and boy was I a rebel (without drugs).Surely part of my pleasure from the film was it holding a mirror of sorts to me, so I was pre-sold, I was bound to find this story engrossing. As for the film-making, good to see how a very small (relatively) investment could pay off in such high satisfaction, at last for this viewer. Was the budget a reason why the other dozen of the original group 1978 elected not to get involved in the project - ? Updates would be welcome.

Ladies and gentlemen… naked hippies! Enjoy! Okay, that said, I have to say this documentary, a sequel to filmmaker Robb Moss's 1978 documentary, "River Dogs," catches up with his fellow former Colorado river guides in the present day. It's been compared to Michael Apted's "7Up" series, but it plays more like a real life "Big Chill," minus the soap operatics of a full-blown reunion, but, alas, complete with (thankfully few) existential musings on these fifty-somethings transitions from just-out-of-college wandering river rats, to successful politicians, fitness gurus and… well… river rats. Yeah, I know, life is just a long strange trip for the flower children turned `yuppie scum,' and yet, the film still comes off like a hilariously funny and occasionally sad little story about human beings. Go figure.

The message of "The Same River Twice" is you're only young once, so you better enjoy it. Watching the five main characters when they're young in 1978 on a nudist rafting trip in the Grand Canyon, and then picking up on where they're at 20 plus years later, is alternately sad and fascinating. The two women, Danny and Cathy, are just amazingly beautiful when they are young, I could watch Danny walk around in the nude all day! Danny keeps her youthful physique into her late 40s when we see her later, whereas time seems to be a little rougher on Cathy. All 5 characters, Danny, Jeff, Cathy, Barry, and Jim, seem to lead rather pleasant lives as they enter their 50s. But their youth is gone, and it's kind of sad. This is the kind of documentary you'd only watch once (it's no "Crumb"), but once is enough.