Lost in America

1985 comedy

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Two unfulfilled married people decide to sell off everything, buy a Winnebago, and live free like those characters in Easy Rider. It doesn't go very well.

This starts with a lengthy tracking shot through our married protagonists' home as a Larry King interview with Rex Reed plays. This irritated me right off the bat. It reminded me of Leonard Maltin popping up in that Gremlins sequel, seeming like an obvious attempt to get at least one good review.

It didn't really need that kind of help as this seems to be a well-regarded comedy. It's got a Criterion release, after all, the main reason I decided to check it out before compiling a best-of-1985 list. Like a lot of comedies from the 1980s, this satirizes corporate life. Yuppie comedies, I guess. How many movies from the 1980s were about people either getting promotions or not getting promotions?

I thought writer/director/star Albert Brooks was about as charming here as I've ever seen him. It's fun to watch him get angry in movies because it's a way that only people in the 1980s could get mad. My parents were mad a lot, but they were never Albert Brooks mad, that way of being mad where you start to sound more and more like Wallace Shawn the more you unleash. I almost always like seeing the mousy Julie Hagerty. Here, she plays a mousy Julie Hagerty. The characters are easy to identify with even if their individual actions or their relationship never really makes much sense.

My main problems with this comedy would be that it's just not very funny and it doesn't really seem to be saying much of anything. A comedy doesn't necessarily have to say something in order to be a success, but it seems like this wants to say something about life in the corporate world or marriage or following one's dreams but is too shy to actually say it.

I like the poster for Lost in America better than the movie.