Review of Motorama (1991) by Josh G — 26 Nov 2008

Being enamored by Nicolas Cage (especially when he's giving over-the-top performances), I rented the 1989 movie Vampire's Kiss off of Netflix just before Halloween. I found it wonderfully demented and hilarious, with a script so sharp that it was honestly impossible to predict in which bizarre direction the action would go next. I found that the man who wrote the screenplay for this film was one Joseph Minion.

I had been hooked by his quirky dialogue and strange characters, and as a result decided a week later to rent the 1985 Martin Scorsese-directed After Hours, also written by our man Joe. Just like the previous movie, After Hours was remarkably morose and yet wacky at the same time. The twisted plot that took place in the dreamworld alleys of New York City had to have the word of an absurd genius.

And so it wasn't too long before I got a craving for more of Joe Minion's peculiar brand of story, and rented from Netflix his 1991 film Motorama.

Joe, I want a divorce.

Everything that had made Minion's writing remarkable and original is missing from this film. The peculiarities that worked in the previous films seem forced here, as though this were a movie written by somebody who was trying to imitate Minion's style -- and yet failing. The plot is interesting: a 10-year-old boy named Gus steals his parents' car and drives across the country collecting game pieces for a gas station game called "Motorama". Unfortunately, though, it isn't put together very well and so Gus finds himself in surreal situations without any purpose to them. One gas station attendant near the beginning has a picture of himself shaking hands with a police officer; he has pasted the picture onto a kite in order to get God to notice it. When a police officer arrives later on, the gas station attendant shakes hands with him and both look toward the camera and there is the flash of a camera's flashbulb. This goes beyond strange into just plain confusing. Why the flashbulb then?

Part of the problem with the movie may also be the fact that the protagonist is a little boy who, frankly, cannot act very well. Even in the strange surroundings of the other two movies, the main character held it all together for the audience by being relateable or certifiably insane. There's not really any coherence here: no reason given for why everybody treats Gus like he's an adult, why he grows a stubble after a few days on the road, and so on. Is it just because it's funny? It is funny, but that's not enough this time.

There are a few hysterical points in the movie. A man who is obsessed with squirrels, a boy who makes fun of Gus for a physical abnormality, and Gus' aforementioned five o'clock shadow being just a few of them. But again, even though these moments made me burst out laughing... well, there's nothing real to hinge it on to. It's just another joke in a jokey alternate universe that doesn't make any sense. So what am I supposed to be feeling?

It's disappointing to see a movie from Joe that is all over the place the way that this one is. He's just not the same man I fell in love with. It's no wonder he didn't write another film until 1999, and even then it was not a Minion original -- it was based on another man's story. I'd like to think that this is just some sort of long-standing midlife crisis; that we'll get through this if we just try to make our relationship work. But after watching Motorama, it's like... it's like I don't even know you, Joe.

Have you, have you given up on us?