Lost in America Reviews

Just when it seemed Albert Brooks had gotten his creative energies under control, along comes this intermittently funny, often overdone comedy that could have been a classic. Brooks is an ad man expecting to get a senior VP stripe. His main worries are how to furnish the new $450,000 house he is about to occupy and how to satisfy his wife, Julie Hagerty, who is complaining that she is bored with the regimentation of their lives. Brooks is shocked when his boss tells him the veep job has gone to someone else and that Brooks will, instead, be transferred to New York. Brooks storms out of the office and then persuades Hagerty to quit her job. They have no children, and they have money saved up; this is their chance to do what everyone wants to do, get lost in America and have a grand time. They sell everything, buy a huge motor home, and leave. It would be a perfect trip except that they get romantically remarried in Las Vegas, and that is the beginning of the end. If a moral exists here, it's that you can't win. Brooks and Hagerty are excellent, and it's good to see Brooks giving someone else a few moments on the screen. Somewhere, underneath all of the indulgence, beats the heart of a filmmaker.