Roadie

Roadie is a fun movie with a chance to see some rock and rollers on the screen. Meatloaf stars and plays a roadie (big stretch there) who is great at fixing stuff and inventing things. A talent he picked up from his Dad played by the unforgettable Art Carney (the one and only Ed Norton from The Honeymooners). Well Meatloaf hits the road and helps the likes of Debbie Harry and her band Blondie, Alice Cooper, Hank Williams Jr among others. Blondie really sound great singing Ring of Fire. The movie is fun and humorous.

I saw this movie in the theatre (independant movie house), in 1980. I loved it. It is a very fun movie, filled with the rebellious spirit of rock & roll. I hope, by some miracle, it comes to DVD. With all the great music, this movie would make a great sountrack (isolated score, hmmm).

As an "old guy" with a nervous disposition who has enough trouble sitting through many movies once, the ultimate tribute I can give this great "on the road" rock'n'roll saga is that I watched it numerous times when it was on cable in 1981, I have watched it several dozens of times on VHS, and now that it's on DVD, I have watched it several times again. You can put a lot of mileage on this road movie. The film has a rock'n'roll backdrop—a backdrop we rarely see from the workingman's eye the way we do here. The movie gives us what amounts to real-world views of several 70's favorites (Meatloaf, Alice Cooper, Blondie, etc.). It has a great premise, the howling self-reliant "Everything Works If You Let It" theme. It also enjoys a background soundtrack that fires on all twelve cylinders. But what keeps me watching the film is that it is really funny in an honest, straight-forward way that we have enjoyed far too seldom since Hollywood started grinding out its cookie-cutter farces in the wake of "Airplane." The dual surprises of the film are the really solid performances put in by Alice Cooper and Meatloaf in their respective roles as rock star and roadie. I am unqualified in my admiration of this movie, but I will tightly qualify the people to whom I would suggest the film. This is a "cult" movie in the most real sense of the word and anyone who is made nervous by rock music, farce that is outside of the "Scary Movie" mainstream, or three-hundred pound leading men (Meatloaf) should avoid this movie at all costs. Also, there is a certain good IL' boy mentality at work here that will not play for some parts of the audience. But to the core audience of the film, these are not qualifications, they are recommendations. The thing I am saddest about is that the movie's soundtrack is no longer available. The soundtrack was worth having simply for the long and messy "Brainlock" which plays during one of the few really funny car chases in the history of film.

Roadie (1980)

** (out of 4)

Travis Redfish (Meat Loaf) is a man who can fix anything so he's hired by a promoter to become a roadie and make sure a rock and roll show keeps going without issues. Lola (Kaki Hunter) is a virgin groupie who wants to land in NYC so that she can give herself to Alice Cooper (who plays himself). ROADIE was one of many musicals that went down as a major flop back in the day but looking at the picture today you can't help but find it somewhat charming and of course there's all the major talent on display. I think the biggest problem can be spotted in the opening credits when you see that four different people are credited with the story. This "story" appears to have about four different sides and all of them are fighting against one another and in the end you're really left with a movie that doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. On one hand, you have a behind the scenes look at a rock show on tour but the thing is so tame that you really do feel as if you're watching something that has been watered down. On another hand you have a groupie getting used to the road but Meat Loaf's character is so full of holes that you have a hard time making any sense out of him. Another problem with the story is that Loaf's character goes "crazy" at times and apparently this is from an earlier UFO abduction but this subplot is just downright annoying. The story goes off in so many directions that you're head will be hurting by the time it's over or you at least be sitting there wondering why they couldn't have just left the spotlight on some of the music acts. Hank Williams, Jr., Blondie, Asleep at the Wheel, Roy Orbison, Jack Elliott and The Pleasant Valley Boys are just a few of the acts that appear and most of them give good performances. We even get a duet between Williams and Orbison, which is certainly worth sitting through. Cooper gets the biggest role of any of the musical acts and he has proved that he can be a very reliable actor and his charm is certain quite high here. One wishes that he had been given even more screen time as he's quite funny here and we also get a couple songs including Only Women Bleed. Meat Loaf also delivers a pretty likable performance as he certainly makes you entertained by his character even though it's underwritten. Hunter is also good in her role. Art Carney appears of Loaf's father but he's sadly wasted. ROADIE is a pretty bad movie due to its bad screenplay but at the same time fans of the musical acts should be somewhat entertained with the music alone. There's a good film somewhere in here but sadly it just goes off in way too many directions.

What can be said about a movie where Meat Loaf plays the most intelligent and sanest character? Maybe that was the one joke of Alan Rudolph's endurance-testing and thoroughly bizarre comedy. The characters here are totally unappealing and Meat Loaf doesn't even sing (except for one brief moment for a characteristic "duel" with the female lead, which is the high point of the movie). The rock star cameos--Roy Orbison, Hank Williams Jr., Alice Cooper, Blondie--look uninspired, as if Rudolph had no idea what to do with them. Only Debbie Harry and co. seem to be making the most of this mess, but even they look baffled. I have nothing against the "free form" style that Rudolph appeared to be aiming for--a movie with a real "rock and roll" spirit. But Rock and Roll High School (which came out one year before this) and Almost Famous (which came out 20 years later) did this much better mainly because the characters were interesting and likeable and we really cared about what happened to them. In this movie, we get a bunch of drunken, whacked-out rednecks with bad teeth. The final shot of the film sheds some light on the strange 90 minutes that preceded it, and Meat Loaf manages some inspired moments. But all in all, this is just a few notches above the "awful" mark and nothing like Rudolph's restrained later work.