Magic Trip (2011)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

READ THIS: Quick summary: At the very beginning you may notice its made my "history" something or other. This in away sums up what to expect from this movie, its fun til about half way through and then its just dreary facts about what happened. I watched sunshine makers and think it was 100X better ...just down to how it was directed and presentedI loved seeing the antics that went on with the bus but the overall feel of the movie left me feeling dry and kind of sad.I felt sad because it didn't really go into enough depth on any of the characters or the philosophy of their movement. It was nice to see such rare content but it didn't go into enough depth is any one area. What i mean by this is it didn't focus down on any body or anything. If they focused more on ken and his life and showed us who everyone was in relation to him i might have felt more of a connection with the characters and enjoyed it more.But the worst thing about this movie is it was divorced from the messages that these pioneer's of the 60's propagated.. the fact that the "merry pranksters" were even too excitable and "free" to sit down and get into the complexity's of the psychedelic philosophy with leary was something that was really lost within this movie. It didn't successfully show the excitement and exploration that these people were engaged in... all it did is vaugely show what happened...

MAGIC TRIP. Long before Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper headed off on their motorbikes to find America in the ground breaking cult classic Easy Rider, author Ken Kesey (One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, etc) and a group of friends set out on their own epic journey across America in a psychedelic coloured school bus. It was 1964, in the wake of the Kennedy assassination, and Kesey and his friends, known as the Merry Band of Pranksters, headed off from California to visit the World's Fair in New York. Along the way we also meet a number of other notable figures of the time, including poet Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, author Larry McMurtry, and Jack Kerouac, regarded as the father of the Beat movement. The legendary trip (!) was also chronicled by novelist Tom Wolfe in his The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Kesey filmed the journey on his 16mm camera, but the film has never been released because it was too disjointed and unfinished. The footage was found in a barn at Kesey's house after his death in 2001. Veteran Oscar winning director Alex Gibney (Taxi To The Dark Side, Client 9, etc) and his regular collaborator Australian born editor Alison Ellwood have re-edited Kesey's raw footage, giving the freewheeling material structure and context. They have added a number of interviews and incorporated some fascinating archival footage to provide insights into the era. They have also used original recordings made by Kesey himself during the journey, with some additional narration from Stanley Tucci. With a soundtrack of rock music from the era, Magic Trip serves as a fascinating time capsule of America in the mid-60s – Kennedy, Vietnam, civil rights, hippie subculture, LSD, paranoia, disillusionment, youthful rebellion, and a growing air of cynicism. Magic Trip is a well made and entertaining documentary that gives some insights into the burgeoning counter-cultural movement of the 60s.

This could have been a movie reminiscent of those often celebrated sixties. However, the people portrayed in this home movie avant la lettre, were far from average. Their ways of living and what we saw thereof was on a safe distance from our own memories of that time.I can understand the attraction of the 100 hour film footage that was left behind. But condensing it into a feature film length, does not work. For starters, we got a super fast intro of characters, leaving unclear who was who, and what tied them together. Secondly, the purpose of the journey was left equally unclear (maybe there wasn't any). Thirdly, it kept us wondering about the vast number of practical aspects for such a journey, like money, groceries, repairs, petrol, and so on. Of course, all this only proves that I wouldn't have blended in with this company, being much too serious and too organized for such a journey to even think about.Anyway, it offered a nice excuse to show TV and movie fragments of that time, and pictures of every-days lives and streets. Also, we saw repeated police checks for no reason, demonstrating that their overall appearance (painted bus, haircut, clothes, etc) was "different". A nice side effect was that we saw and heard VSOP music fragments of that time, working well to refresh our memories. Similarly, it showed us how progressive people dressed in the sixties. Could that be all there is to fill 107 minutes of film, and keep our attention span??All in all, what we saw was kaleidoscopic, to say the least. On one hand, it was interesting for some­one who grew up in that time (like me) but nearly forgot all about it (I did). On the other hand, it did not go beyond the family album level with pictures from the past. Leaves us wondering how more than 100 hours of film footage and sound fragments could have survived the continuous chaos these people used to live in. Again, this question proves that it was not my kind of company. Maybe good for us that they existed, important as they may have been as a catalyst for cultural changes, if only to practically demonstrate how to detach yourself from the daily grind and drop all common conventions.

I read Tom Wolfe's novel and was pretty impressed. I watched this movie and wasn't. In the novel the pranksters have a clear underlying philosophy to their antics and as such mark an important historical beginning of the 60's youth counterculture. In the novel there is a recurring theme railing against the crass materialism of America at the time and a continuation of the artistic beat movement of the 50's. In the movie we're pretty much simply given an advert for LSD. As I understood it drugs and sex were used as a MEANS to a greater understanding and a new philosophy of life. But what we witness in this film is simply irresponsible self gratification and mindless hedonism which I guess is what eventually burnt the 60's out. Maybe Wolfe made it all up and this film represents the reality? If so it was a big disappointment for me. I'm with Kerouac on this one. I'd share a beer with him on that sofa in New York and have a good moan about what a bunch of irritating,vain, stupid,shallow, self indulgent pricks they all were.