Three for the Road

I saw this movie when I was very young and I still love it just as much. A teenage girl's, (Kerri Green), father, who is also a senator, hires Charlie Sheen, (who brings along friend, Alan Ruck, for the ride), to drive her cross-country to be institutionalized for anger management issues. Much chaos ensues on the road! Touching at times, comical at others, I definitely encourage you to check this movie out, especially if you're a big fan of 80's films. Young Charlie Sheen and Alan Ruck's performances are quite enjoyable, as well as Kerri Green's. If you're a Charlie Sheen or Alan Ruck fan, then check this movie out! Great piece of 80's film nostalgia!

I saw this film in 1987, or maybe it was 1988, and my friends and I laughed hysterically because this film is so awful! It's one of those movies that are so bad they are hilarious. Favorite line: Sally Kellerman telling her ex-husband, "You so much as breathe a word of this, and I'll have your d*** in a pencil sharpener!" I also found one scene to be disturbing...a black man who is hauling a load of live chickens stops to help, and ends up with his truck @ chickens tumbling down a steep hill. While the main characters speed off, this poor man has lost his truck and his chickens. The main characters then laugh. Alan Ruck ("Spin City") sarcastically declares that he feels sorry for "those chickens." This film is a disaster, directed by the brilliant B.W.L. Norton ("More American Graffiti," "Baby: Secret Of The Lost Legend.") This movie seems to try to recapture the spirit of the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby "road" movies, but fails miserably. When this came out on video, I decided to watch it again, thinking that I might have missed something. I watched the video with my mom. My mom, approaching her sixties, said that this was the kind of movie kids used to watch back in the 40's and 50's. Enough said. NOTE: Alot of people are mistaken. This film was made and shelved BEFORE Charlie Sheen starred in Oliver Stone's "Platoon." It was only released after "Platoon" was a hit.

Paul Tracy (Charlie Sheen) is an aide to his hero Republican US Senator Kitteredge (Raymond J. Barry) who is aiming for the White House. He meets Kitteredge for the first time and is given the task to drive his delinquent daughter Robin (Kerri Green) to be hidden away in an institution. She is sedated and he gets his roommate T.S. (Alan Ruck) to come along. She keeps trying to escape and telling them disturbing stories about the Senator. Robin and Paul fall for each other. She escapes and picks up Missy who is running away from stupid Junior. Robin is trying to find her absent mother Blanche (Sally Kellerman).

It's too bad that Kerri Green fades away after this movie. She had a couple of great movies in the 80s. I wish she got a few more opportunities. She is as cute as ever in this movie even with her crazy hairdo. The three young actors are good. The story is a little bit awkward. It's not all funny since it's a little bit of a kidnapping. The romance works only because of the two young actors.

I don't think anyone is watching this movie looking for superior writing and acting, but if you want wild and wacky adventures this is pretty good.

We keep moving down the road, crossing state lines. Lots of wild car chases and stunts, with some excellent work by drivers who really have to be careful what they're doing. The best car chase of the entire movie involves Junior's car, and wait until you see how that ends!

It's not all wild action. There are a couple of sweet scenes involving Paul and Robin.

Many laws are broken and one disaster after another gives us a really wild ending. Only in the movies!

Seriously? Charlie Sheen is someone who can be trusted with an important job? Well, at this stage in his career he is quite believable as a proper, professional yuppie. Sheen is totally different from anything else I have ever seen him in, except maybe "Wall Street", but it has been a while so I don't even remember. So proper and responsible. So nice when the situation calls for it. And then he ends up in situations Charlie Harper could have easily found himself in. I'm not sure he's that good when he has to be angry, but he gets the job done.

I've never heard of Kerri Green but it's a shame. She was quite good, really, given the material. Robin is actually a sweet and misunderstood girl, but wait until you see what she gets away with in a fine restaurant just because she's a senator's daughter. And then it's time to spend the night in a motel. That's when the real fun begins, but not before we get to see Robin in her underwear. I assume it's underwear, because why would she have a swimsuit?

I know Alan Ruck best as a womanizing jerk in "Spin City" but he is so different here and much more likable.

Not a great role for James Avery, who was praised so highly in Will Smith's Oscar speech, only a couple of years before he became Uncle Phil. But pretty good. And if you disliked his behavior ... well, Robin is clumsy.

Sally Kellerman is actually pretty good but is this movie truly worthy of someone who starred in one of the greatest of all films?

Is this family friendly? Cleaned up for TV, maybe it's acceptable for older kids. You can't be too mature and still appreciate this. How convenient that some of the worst language in the movie was probably bleeped out by car horns and such.

It's a fun adventure if your expectations aren't too high.

I wrote this movie. It was my first major film, and I went to the set to visit while they were shooting it in Arkansas. Charlie Sheen, who had just starred in "Platoon" told me he loved the script, but what they were shooting was .. well, let's just say rewritten. I thought he was exaggerating, until I told my friends to meet me at the Egyptian theater in Hollywood for the opening weekend. 3000 seat theater - and only 8 people attended the 8 p.m. show. I hated it. I hated the reviews it got, it made me decide that if my movie was going to get screwed up, I was going to direct it, and at least I'd be responsible for it. So, for better or worse, that's what I've been doing since then. However, I have some nostalgia for this piece - its genesis was seeing Senator Moynihan's daughter dancing on a bar in Cambridge when I went to college. The original story was about a Senator's daughter who is ruining his re-election bid by staging protests. He decides to send her to a reform school and assigns his young up and coming assistant to do the job. His roommate is a stringer for a Washington rag, and he begs to come along. Along the way the daughter escapes multiple times, but mainly wants to find her mom - who abandoned her father. She thinks its because the mom agrees with her politics; I thought Dabney Coleman would have been the perfect Senator. It runs out her mom was just 'getting high' too much when she was in college, got pregnant and didn't want to have a family. Depressed with the truth, the daughter decides to shape up and take reform school in stride. By the end, she's transformed the Senator's assistant, who's fallen in love with her and won't let her compromise her principles. There's a twist at the end, but basically it was a rip off of my former boss Robert Towne's brilliant take on "The Last Detail." This was my "Last Detail." Sorry it's not better than it is, but now you know the truth. Rich Martini