The Open Road, starring Justin Timberlake and Jeff Bridges as an estranged son and father who struggle to reconnect during a cross-country trip to visit Timberlake’s ailing mother, opens in limited release today. Sure, it sounds like a downer, until you consider that the next road movie coming out is October’s The Road, where Viggo Mortensen plays a father struggling to protect his son from cannibals in postapocalyptic America. Suddenly the Timberlake flick seems pretty rompy!
The Open Road is a dramedy, supposedly, but I usually like my road movies to have a little more whimsy in the engine. You know what I mean — they should have things like bears in Studebakers and phantom truck drivers and Paul Giamatti freaking out like a tightly wound wallaby. With that in mind, hop in and let’s take a ride down the Random Road Movie Highway.
The Muppet Movie (1979): I wouldn’t know what to think about somebody who doesn’t love The Muppet Movie, other than that he or she is probably a sociopath. In fact, that’s the first question the authorities should ask suspected serial killers: Do you love The Muppet Movie? If the answer is no — BAM! Throw away the key.
The Muppet Movie — directed by TV veteran James Frawley, who, frankly, Jim Henson should’ve kept around for the rest of the Muppet movies — is a lot of things: a musical, a comedy, and the best repository of cameo appearances since It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), but at its heart it’s a road movie. It’s even — dare I say it — an odyssey. (And unlike It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, which I suppose could fit the same description, it’s aged beautifully. Even the Hare Krishna bits are still funny.)
I said something that sent a jolt of disbelief through the ranks of Popdose. I have been known to take my opinions to the far side, but this one threatened to betray an ignorance I didn’t know I harbored. Let me spell it out and see if I’m as far off base as some have claimed me to be: