Lost in America

Many, many years ago, when I was still in high school, my dad decided that he was going to have me watch several Albert Brooks movies. I think Dad had come to the conclusion that Brooks is a cinematic genius and wanted to share that genius with me. Since we typically have similar tastes in movies (Citizen Kane not withstanding), it was a reasonable request.

It turned out, though, that Albert Brooks would divide us the same way Charles Foster Kane had. After dutifully sitting through two Brooks movies, I declared the man a bore and refused to watch anything more.

One of those movies was Lost in America. The movie had such little impact on me that until recently I forgot it even existed. I would not have been able to tell you any of the plot, let alone any of the dialogue.

Then my history professor from college (the one who taught my American Highways course) emailed me a couple weeks ago to suggest that I watch it.

Slowly, bits of the movie started coming back to me: A couple sells all their belongings to head out in an RV. Well, that's certainly worth a watch!

So I put it in my Netflix queue and waited.

It arrived the other day, and Steve and I watched the other night. (The rest of this post contains spoilers, so if you don't want to know what happens in the movie, stop reading.)

Basically, a guy from LA gets passed over for a promotion. He quits his high-paying, white-collar job and convinces his wife to do the same. They decide to "drop out of society" and travel the country, like in Easy Rider. They forgo the deposit on their newly purchased house, liquidate their assets, and head out with a $145,000 nest egg to last the rest of their lives.

Their first stop is Las Vegas, where the wife gambles away all but $800 of said nest egg. They keep driving as far as Podunk, Arizona, where they decide they'll get jobs and rebuild their savings.

They quickly realize that they are not cut out for entry-level blue-collar life and decide to high-tail it to New York, where the husband begs back his old job, at one-third the salary, "but with better dental."

As soon as the movie was over, Steve said, sarcastically, "Well, that was inspirational."

It's true that the movie is a bit unsettling given our current situation. Southern California yuppies leaving their lives behind to experience America on the road, then failing miserably after only a couple weeks.

At the same time, though, the movie is absolutely hilarious, and I'm not sure why I didn't see that before. Maybe when I first saw it I was in a bad mood, or maybe didn't have the life experience to appreciate it, or maybe I was determined to prove my dad wrong about something. But I will admit it now: He was right, and Lost in America is a piece of genius. I might even watch it again before I send it back to Netflix, and I'll probably add a couple more Albert Brooks movies to my queue. I'm still not admitting defeat on Citizen Kane, though.