Lewis & Clark & George

Movies of this ilk are built on the false conceit that just below the surface of the social fabric of life in the US there is a pervasive swamp of bizarre and outright murderous personalities erupting haphazardly but daily through the surface and giving evidence of the "true" dementia ready to cascade quite randomly into "everyday" existence. There may be eight million stories in the naked city but most are damned boring and far more subject to quiet desperation than to blatant murder and mutilation. This is a young film maker's early effort but, hey, how about a little originality. The reality is that there is nothing new to the filmatic depiction of escaped gun-toting idiots, whores, and the David Lynch-like presumption that surrealism is more real than reality. I guess its just difficult to make good, interesting movies out of the humdrum disasters, desires, tragedies, and triumphs of un-extreme, mainstream life. But that is why intelligence, perception, and creativity are the necessary concomitants of achievement. Everbody in this movie is a moron. This is not hyperbole. Everybody in this movie (apart for a dog and one Mexican) is an outright moron. Every waitress, mailman, passerby, and, especially, cop is a pinhead. Check out Treasure of Sierra Madre, Bogie's Desperate Hours, any of Cagney's criminals, or It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World for the roots of this lightweight kill-a-thon. My God, its so predictable.

The film starts out slow but changes as soon as Rose McGowan,a.k.a. George appears. The acting is pure brilliance. I have never seen anyone who could make such a character as believable as she has. The plotline was very,very thin but I believe that the acting saved the movie. If you're looking for great acting and to KILL a little time then this is the film for you.

I've never understood why movie-makers are so fascinated by idiots who kill people for no apparent reason. Personally I find idiots who kill people for no apparent reason about as interesting as slugs, and there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that this movie would have been *WAY* more interesting and rewarding if slugs had been substituted for all the principle characters.

A bad Quentin Tarantino rip off, at least I hope that's what they were going for because at least then I could respect the director for admiring Tarantino. One scene a "singing" scene with Rose McGowan is far to well done and genius for this film and could have only been stumbled on by mistake by this director. So besides his Quinton inspiration and Rose McGowan and her one good scene this film sucked. Some of the crappiest dialogue I have ever heard, I'm willing to bet why McGowan doesn't speak much is because of how crappy her dialogue would have been. Tries to be funny, never is, tries to be dark and isn't, tries to be stylish and is just bland. Who dishes out the money to make movies like this, I'm hoping it was all the directors so no one else's money was wasted. If not for McGowan the whole cast is awful and when McGowan is your best hmmm, I gotta wonder.

'Lewis & Clark & George' definately fits into a nitch- that of the black comedy road movie- but it does a good job of fulfilling the requirements of said nitch without becoming too generic. Rose McGowan is George, a gorgeous, deadly and mute young woman with a lot of tricks up her leopard-print sleeves. She has stolen a rare snake from a zoo, leaving her boyfriend to the devices of a mad bowler who proceeds to pursue her for the rest of the film. Not every character in this movie is a moron, as has been asserted. You can be pretty sure that George, at least, has a triple-digit I.Q. Lewis and Clark are a pair of escaped convicts, as different from each other as can be. Lewis is blond, illiterate, (it's a running joke that he keeps encountering and faking out other illiterate people,) and a cheerful murderer. Clark is dark-haired, a computer nerd, and would seem to have the sense of self-preservation Lewis lacks if not for the way he falls for George like a ton of bricks. They all share the desire to find a Mexican gold mine. There aren't any big mysteries here, except maybe how Rose managed to stay so pale shooting almost the whole movie in near-desert conditions. Fairly predictable things happen. It's a fairly predictable movie. Nonetheless, at least this predictable movie is fun while it lasts.