Director: Joe Dante
Cast: Ethan Hawke, River Phoenix, Jason Presson, Robert Picardo
Have I Seen it Before: Never! I know, I know.
Did I Like It: This review, was almost—and I do mean it was this close—to being a meditation of the conflict between me perpetually feeling as if I have not seen enough movies in my life, and perpetually being delighted that there will always be more movies that I can enjoy for the first time. How many more Joe Dante-directed, Jerry Goldsmith-scored, complete with a Dick Miller supporting role movies are out there? Not that much, for various reasons. What other movies have I missed out there that are waiting for me? How many of them will be about nerdy kids more focused on Illustrated Classics and whatever sci-fi movie is on TV that night reaching out into the cosmos? Honestly, at some point I muttered as the movie unfurled, “This movie is dope…”
Then the movie kept going…
And going…
And not a whole lot actually ended up happening in the film. The boys get the Thunder Road up and running after any number of false starts. They actually manage to travel farther than anynone has ever gone before, and encounter aliens. They hang out a bit.
And that’s it. That’s the whole movie. They go back to dreaming about things that might happen, despite the best stuff already having happened to them, only this time the girl next door (Amanda Peterson), a character who is occasionally discussed but has almost no impact on the story, gets to come along.
How can all these things happen in a movie where not much happens? There couldn’t be some kind of complication when they get on the alien ship? There couldn’t be some kind of problem with the people of earth that our three heroes could be central to helping?
The studio may have rushed things for the film, but were they rushing it from the first draft of the screenplay? Was all of the plot filtered out of a rushed edit?