Published: August 25, 2019, 10:30 PM
Updated: August 30, 2019, 2:26 AM
The road movie: a journey of discovery
Like the first recorded automobile road trip (by Karl Benz’s wife Bertha and her children, to visit her mother), the road movie involves a journey usually falling into one of two classifications — the quest (where the protagonists are looking for something, physical or existential) or the chase (where they are running from authorities), but sometimes starts as the former and ends as the latter. Following are 21 examples, which could be many, many more.
▲
Road Trip (2000)
Four college friends head off across the country to intercept a sex-tape of a 1-night stand from reaching the protagonist’s long-distance girlfriend. As with many road films, twist and turns along the way make the journey considerably more difficult, and comedic, than originally conceived.
▲
Detour (1945)
The constant of the road film is that the journey becomes more complicated as the plot progresses, with early seemingly inconsequential decisions proving anything but, down the road. In this film noir, NYC night club piano player hitchhikes to California to propose to his singer girlfriend, who had left him to seek Hollywood fame. He gets a ride from a pill-popping bookie who dies accidentally and that starts the wheel of fate turning.
▲
Goodbye Pork Pie (1981)
Also revolving around a broken relationship, this New Zealand film pairs a recently-dumped middle-aged man trying to win back his ex-girlfriend, with an aimlessly-drifting petty thief in a rented Mini. The two, and others they meet along the way, end up running afoul of the law, mostly through mishaps, as they make their way from the northern tip to southern tip of the country.
▲
Goin’ Down the Road (1970)
More of a destination film than a road film, the Canadian classic centres on Cape Breton friends Pete and Joey, who leave their Nova Scotia home in a Chevrolet Impala named “My Nova Scotia Home,” hoping to find good paying jobs in Ontario, but only finding similar wages, a higher cost of living and responsibilities beyond working and drinking beer. They eventually load up the car again for a run to the West Coast.
▲
The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
Of course, nothing can top the “find a better life” road film that The Grapes of Wrath, the story of a family escaping the dust bowl of depression-era Oklahoma for sunny promises of California, only to find overcrowding, joblessness and oppression.
▲
The Long, Long Trailer (1954)
Finding a better life is also the theme of the Desi Arnaz/Lucille Ball comedy about a newlywed husband, who travels to various cities as a civil engineer, and his wife, who decides investing in a travel trailer is better than purchasing a house somewhere and constantly being separated. Naturally, it isn’t as seriously simple as it sounds.
▲
Vacation (1983)
Not all family-oriented road films are about packing up to find a better life somewhere else. Many are about families taking to the road for vacations, and there’s probably no better example about the laughs such an undertaking entails than National Lampoon’s classic tale of the Griswold family driving from Chicago to visit a world-famous theme park in California.
▲
Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
The emotional story of a dysfunctional family is played for laughs on the road when a pre-teen aspiring beauty queen learns she has been accepted into California’s Little Miss Sunshine pageant and her supportive parents pack up her foul-mouthed grandfather, suicidal gay uncle and broody teenage stepbrother into the family’s mechanically-challenged Volkswagen Microbus for the 2-day, 1,300-km drive.
▲
Rain Man (1988)
Dysfunction in the family on the road is also the basis of the relationship between car-importer Charlie Babbitt and his estranged older autistic brother Raymond (institutionalized in Ohio), as the two embark on a cross-country drive in a 1949 Buick convertible, after Raymond becomes hysterical at the airport while boarding a flight.
▲
Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)
Family is also at the heart of the classic buddy comedy about a marketing executive trying to make it home for Thanksgiving but thwarted hilariously at every turn and always meeting up with his complete opposite, a coarse happy-go-lucky travelling salesman. The classic part happens after the two rent a car, destroy it, along with their wallets, but manage to form a special bond.
▲
Dumb and Dumber (1994)
Two not so bright friends set off on a cross-country trip from Rhode Island to Colorado to return a forgotten briefcase, which was actually left behind as a ransom payment. They set off in a van customized to look like a dog, but along the way trade in the van for a mini-bike before discovering the briefcase is filled with cash and proceed to make some minor purchases, including a Lamborghini Diablo.
▲
Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)
Reportedly the inspiration for Brock Yates’s Cannonball runs, this cult film chronicles the adventures of a driver and mechanic (identified only as such) played by musicians James Taylor and Dennis Wilson (of the Beach Boys), respectively, who go from town to town drag-racing their 1955 Chevrolet for cash, and end up in a race across America with a Pontiac GTO driven by Warren Oates.
▲
Easy Rider (1969)
When it comes to buddy road films, it doesn’t get much better than the motorcycle epic Easy Rider, written, produced and starred in by Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, about two free spirits riding from LA to New Orleans, experiencing the cultural issues of the time — the rise of hippie culture, drugs and the conflict the two created between generations in the US south.
▲
Wild Hogs (2007)
The comedic road movie about four middle-aged motorcycle enthusiasts bored with their day-to-day existences, has them taking a cross country ride and eventually conflicting with a biker gang when they burn down the bar owned by the gang’s founder, played by Fonda. He shows up at the end and schools his son and his buddies on the power of insurance, the joy of riding, and why you don’t mix leathers with designer watches.
▲
The Motorcycle Diaries (2004)
While a university-student in Buenos Aires, Ernesto Guevara embarked on an 8,000-km motorcycle trip along the Andes, from Argentina to Peru, with friend Alberto Granado, with the goal of volunteering at a Peruvian leper colony. The extensive notes he took along the journey that wound up in Miami (via Colombia and Venezuela), witnessing the struggle of the oppressed and impoverished, would forge his Marxist ideology and future as the revolutionary Che.
▲
Thelma and Louise (1991)
This buddy road film starts off as a weekend getaway for friends Thelma and Louise in Louise’s 1966 Ford Thunderbird, but quickly goes askew when Louise kills a bar patron trying to assault Thelma. The two then pick up a young drifter, who robs them, forcing them to rob a convenience store, steal a state trooper’s gun and ammo, and blow up a tanker truck, before driving off the edge of the Grand Canyon. This is one of the ones we don’t recommend for road-trip inspiration.
▲
Sideways (2004)
With a less ominous turn, this buddy getaway film concerns two friends — Miles, a depressed writer/wine aficionado and Jack, a soon to be married former soap-star looking for one last fling before settling into marriage and his father-in-law’s real estate business— in Jack’s Saab 900 Convertible. They drink a lot of wine and hook up with a couple women, before the adventure falls apart and they go back to their everyday lives.
▲
Kalifornia (1993)
Graduate student gets book-publishing deal from an article he wrote on serial killers, so he and photographer girlfriend Carrie decide to move from Kentucky to California, visiting infamous murder sites along the way. He posts the availability of a ride to anyone willing to share expenses, and that leads to a connection with psychopathic parole-dodger Early and his developmentally-challenged girlfriend Adelle. The arrangement quickly deteriorates shortly after they set off.
▲
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995)
The film follows the road adventures of drag queens (Patrick Swayze, Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo) from New York to Los Angeles in a classic Cadillac. Along the way, they encounter discrimination from smalltown-America men while helping their wives and girlfriends with their personal presentations.
▲
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)
Similar in plot, this road film centres on two drag queens (Hugo Weaving and Guy Pearce) and a transgender woman (Terence Stamp) on a journey across the Australian Outback in a tour-coach they Christen Priscilla, heading to a 4-week run at a casino in Alice Springs. Along the way, they deal with hatred, violence and acceptance from various individuals and groups.
▲
Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989)
The fictitious Russian group (complete with overblown quiff hairstyles and foot-long Winklepicker boots) actually became a real band following the film, which chronicles their immigration to New York from Siberia. They set off for a gig in Mexico in a Cadillac Fleetwood limousine (complete with roof coffin for their bass player who froze to death the night before they left Siberia) through the US south, adapting their music style for performances along the way.
▲