Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

'I'VE SEEN THE FUTURE... HE'S A BALD HEADED FART FROM NEW YORK.... DON'T HAVE LUNCH WITH THIS MAN.'

Albert Brooks is not as consistent or as prolific as other satirist comedians turn film-makers (like Woody Allen) but he is capable of writing, acting and directing some of the most scathingly funny scenes I've ever witnessed on the movie screen. Real Life, Modern Romance, Lost in America, Defending Your Life, and Mother boast some of the funniest scenes you'll ever see.

Who is this filmmaker, actor, comedian, stand-up comic, frequent guest voice on the Simpsons anyway?

Albert Brooks was born with the name Albert Einstein.

Really (he was born July 22, 1947).

His father was a well known radio comedian known as Parkyakarkus. His brother by the way is also in show business and works as Dave Osbourne otherwise known as Super Dave who was formerly Officer Judy on the original legendary Smothers Brothers Variety Show on C.B.S.

Albert Brooks' began his career as an actor who made several appearances on summer t.v. variety shows like Dean Martin Presents the Gold Diggers or Dean Martin presents The Bobby Darin Amusement Hour. He did some Saturday Morning cartoon voice work (Hot Wheels) and made a couple appearances as a recurring character on t.v.'s The Odd Couple sit-com series. In the early 1970's he began his career as one of the most interesting, avant-garde stand-up comedians that anyone had ever seen. His first short film- called Famous Comedians School was aired in the early 1970's as part of the PBS' Great American Dream Machine series.

He struck people as strange and off-the-wall as Andy Kauffman would several years later. Brooks' however always seemed accessible. His humor was off-the-wall and bizarre, but his seemingly eager to please puppy-dog personality was likeable--even if he sometimes turned the tables a bit on audiences or interviewers who tried to label him. He worked the comedy club circuit in the early 1970's, recorded a few comedy albums and wound up on the big talk shows Johnny, (The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson--who genuinely seemed to like Brooks), Mike Douglas (who liked everyone), and Merv Griffin (who seemed baffled by Brooks' off-the wall humor). Brooks was originally going to be the regular host of Lorne Michaels late night comedy sketch variety show that would become Saturday Night Live. It was Brooks who talked himself out of a job by suggesting that the program use guest hosts. Brooks' wound up contributing a half dozen short films (several of which are now classics) during SNL's first season. He made his first significant feature film debut playing a campaign worker in Martin Scorcese's Taxi Driver. He helped write or ad-libbed most of his dialogue in the film.

The first feature film Albert Brook's wrote and directed was 1979's Real Life and it was a parody/satire of an early 1970's P.B.S. documentary series called The American Family (the Louds). It was an experiment in documentary television that we would call reality television today. MTV with Real World and other programs (and now the network with shows like Big Brother) took the idea to the next level. Albert Brooks with Real Life spotted the upcoming trend and lampooned it's faults and poked fun at the Middle Class American Suburban life 1970's style as well as documentary film-makers and t.v. news.

His next film, Modern Romance was a scathingly funny, sometimes painful look at relationships and much more.

The best way to watch an Albert Brooks film is on the big screen with a big audience. If that is not possible then please gather as many friends and acquaintances who are not afraid to laugh out loud and concentrate on watching one of his films on the ol' TV.

A film like LOST IN AMERICA for instance.

Yes, I am actually going to review Lost in America after all.

Lost in America was originally release in 1985 in the middle of the Greed is Good, Reagonomics era. It's a comedy that skewers not just Yuppies and Corporate Culture but the idea of rebelling against that life style as well. It's a film that contains a couple of long but brilliantly written sequences that are among the funniest scenes I've ever seen on the screen. Scenes that can be placed next to the best of the Marx Brothers, or Woody Allen.

Albert Brooks plays the same kind of self-obsessed, egotistical neurotic guy he always plays. As Lost in American opens David Howard (Albert Brooks) is driving his wife Linda (Julie Haggerty) absolutely crazy with how anxious he is about finally getting the important promotion he has been working toward at the Advertising Agency he works at, for several years. David and Linda have also just bought a new house and are having it decorated prior to moving in.

David is very antsy about the promotion and fantasizes about how big of a raise he will be getting. When he gets to his office he has a long conversation with a Mercedes Benz care salesman on the phone. (The salesman we hear talking to him on the phone is voiced by Albert Brooks by the way). He has just about decided that he will reward himself with the Mercedes.

At a meeting with his boss, David learns he is being transferred to work on the agencies biggest, newest and most important client (FORD). The means he is being re-located to New York. City. His boss insists this transfer is much bigger and much more important than the expected promotion but David flips out and begins insulting everyone in the office. He gets himself fired and escorted out of the building by security.

He then decides that it was all a sign. A sign to drop out and like the characters in the movie Easy Rider, hit the road and see the country. Being middle aged and married he decides that he will liquidate everything he has, but an expensive Mobile Home and travel around the country to experience life and touch Indians.

First of course he has to get his wife Linda to quit her job and then agree to his suddenly hatched plan.

As you might imagine the plan to see the Country in a mobile home and be like the characters in Easy Rider does not work as planned. Almost as soon as the couple starts their journey towards re-discovery serious problems develop.

Julie Haggerty and Albert Brooks are extremely believable as a relatively happily married couple. Haggerty works so well in sync with Brooks you sometimes take her for granted and then realize she is keeping up with Albert Brooks . I don't think anyone has ever worked with Brooks as well as Haggerty does here. She is asked at times to be his foil, his defender, his booster, his albatross and his romantic partner. Their timing together couldn't be better.

Lost in American is a dark comedy which slightly exaggerates a very believable real life situation and creates an almost tragic situation which is then mined for its satiric and comedic gold.

It's a tricky, risky way to build a comedy. Brooks' humor relies on satire, comedy and situational humor. Have you ever wanted to splurge and get a great hotel room to impress your wife or girlfriend? Every tried to do something like that on the spur of the moment? Well imagine if things start to go wrong with a situation like that. Better yet.. see Lost in America.

I don't want to spoil Lost in America, because the comedy is in the little surprises and a couple of the twists and turns the movie takes. Twists and turns that are closer to reality than movie comedy. Twists and turns you'll identify with.

This is comedy that comes from pain-- The pain that comes from being a little too stubborn ; The pain that results as payback for being a little controlling; the pain one feels when you discover you may not be the most special and luckiest human being ever put on the planet--the pain one feels when the best laid plans go astray; and the pain one feels when you discover your gamble is not only NOT going to pay off, but it's going to have disastrous consequences.

Welcome to the world of Albert Brooks where somehow in the face of complete and utter devastating setbacks, hope and optimism leads to awareness that even after you've fallen, things can get worse.

Oh but don't completely lose hope. There's a light at the end of the tunnel… isn't there?

Steve Martin once borrowed the phrase Comedy is not pretty and built a pretty funny routine out of it. Albert Brooks has proven the truth of that statement with his entire career.

Brooks continually seems to be taking chances and sometimes trips over his own ideas in unsatisfactory ways. The characters he plays are not immediately endearing to the audience. They are egotistical, spoiled whiners. Sometimes they are very annoying and unlike-able.

Albert Brooks is an acquired taste. While it's not too difficult to enjoy his performances in Taxi Driver or Broadcast News, he still isn't an overly likeable guy. He's a real self-centered jerk in the film Real Life and he's throwing himself a pity party for what seems like half of Modern Romance. His characters are suppose to grate and be somewhat pathetic. What might be real uncomfortable is if you recognize more of yourself in him than you would like to admit.

Albert Brooks' best comedy comes from his ability to play a character we can partially identify with. A character we wish would have an easier time of it, but pretty much deserves the lousy things that happen to him. We can feel a little relieved that although we recognize the possibility of having the same flaws as the characters he plays, we are not quite as stubborn, or rash as his character is.

If you are a fan of Brooks' you appreciate how he stays focused on the believable situations he creates and doesn't spend much time with unnecessary bits of business or gags or with winking knowingly at the audience. He doesn't milk laughs with a reliance on reaction shots. His comic timing is slightly off of the norm and it takes a moment or two to get used to. He doesn't explain his jokes and if he creates an awkward situation he makes sure the audience realizes that their watching an awkward, embarrassing situation

Brooks' strength is that he doesn't decide to soften his character merely to be better accepted and liked by the audience. Even when he is playing a fairly normal sort of character he is still not spending any time trying to get us to like him. You accept him for what he is or you don't.

In Lost of America Brooks' David is the Yuppie who rebels against how unfair life has been to him. He didn't get the promotion he wanted, the way he wanted it and so it's payback time. He wants to save face and impress everyone he's ever known by showing them he doesn't need what they need. He's better than that. He can throw it all away and turn his back on the fancy cars, and the fancy job. He refuses to compete anymore as a rebellion at having the rug slipped from underneath him. It's the kid threatening to take the kick-ball home with him and end the game if he doesn't get what he wants--Except what David gets is a slap on the back and a see you later.

When he meets true middle class and lower class Americans, he gets to sees himself through their eyes for the first time in a very long time and realizes that he had the kind of life they dream about having. That what he had was far from perfect but it is something worth having because only a privileged few get to have the kind of life, the kind of success he had. He enjoys and craves people being envious of his life. It may be somewhat perverted and wrong to be so materialistic but it's pretty important to him.

Did he really throw it away? Can he get it back?

Lost in America is a very talky film. Toward the end of the film there seems to be a sudden burst of energy than it almost too abruptly ends. I felt a little cheated the first time I saw the film because I wanted a little more. Wait a minute, I said to myself, that's it? Yes, that is it. There was no need for the film to do anything else. I had another laugh out of the film as I realized I had just seen a truly inspired ending. It would have been wrong for the film to have continued a moment longer.

Lost in America is Albert Brook's most consistent, focused and sustained comic film. It's a film that is deceptively simple but is worthy of closer analysis and consideration. Its subtexts are dense. I'm not talking about it's pop references to Easy Rider or Larry King, but it's literary ones to Homer, Shakespeare, Fitzgerald, and Kerouak to name a few.

GULP !!!!

Relax, I won't go any deeper into it. Comedy after all is not pretty and analyzing comedy is not only not funny, it's also quite boring.

"You may not say nest egg to me ever again. You are forbidden to use either the word nest or the word egg. In the morning we have those things sunny side up with toast."

DVD STUFF

Lost in America, is presented in an anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen aspect ratio. An excellent print has been transferred to this DVD and there are few noticeable defects to be observed. One is aware of some graininess but it is not in the least distracting. The colors often look rather bland, but that is how Brooks wanted them to look. The colors burst off the screen crisply in the exterior Las Vegas scenes. Some of the interior scenes are a little darker than perhaps they should be.

The DVD's audio is presented as a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. The dialogue is crisp, clean and free from any audio blemishes that might distract. A couple of important and quite funny music cues have been mixed a bit louder than other music used and sounds full and very bright. This works particularly well during the film's finale'

The disc has very little in the way of extras. The original theatrical trailer is presented in widescreen and there are also filmographies for the key cast members and a list of awards that the film included on the disc.

NOTE: This review replaces the much shorter review of Lost In America that I submitted to Epinons in late July of 2000. Only 4 people rated my former review... This is one is an improvement, much longer and will hopefully be read by a few more people. Enjoy.


Christopher Jarmick,is the author of The Glass Cocoon with Serena F. Holder a critically acclaimed, steamy suspense thriller. For information on Author readings/signings or availability of special autographed editions of the novel email: glasscocoon@hotmail for details.

Original portions of this review Copyright© Christopher J. Jarmick 2001. The above work is protected by international copyright law.


Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older