One Paragraph Movie Review: Easy Rider

One hundred and twenty-fifth film: Easy Rider. If you’d only ever just paid attention to the surface hype associated with this movie, you’d go “Cool man, road movie with a killer soundtrack”. But when you watch it, you have one of two reactions — either “Cool man, a downwardly-spiralling movie about nihilism, counterculture and sideburns”, or “Woah, those are Toni Basil’s boobs”. Easy Rider doesn’t have a story so much as a theme, summarised neatly by Southern-accented young Jack Nicholson’s stoned fireside speech about rednecks hating non-conformists. I mean, maybe the rednecks are just cross about the intensely uncomfortable graveyard acid trip scene, but that doesn’t mean they should necessarily get their guns out. How depressing that some Americans still do. When all’s said, done, and shot though, my unrequited love affair with substance-affected Dennis Hopper — here both acting and directing — ardently continues. Three and three-quarter very shiny Peter Fonda leather pants out of five.