Books, Arts & Manners: Near Misses

It is too bad that in Lost in America Albert Brooks is only kidding; all the film needs to be a devastating comedy is a little seriousness. The impossibility of breaking out of the system, the robotization of the careeroriented, upwardly mobile middle-class couple who, even with a shove of fate to nudge them along, cannot start afresh in some spontaneous, grass-roots, laterally mobile way, has powerful seriocomic potential; not for nothing has Preston Sturges’s name been invoked in connection with this film. But despite a fine farcical frenzy, acute observation of everyday absurdities, and some wrenchingly comic episodes, the film cannot lift itself into high comedy, even if it towers over whatever else is around.

David Howard (Albert Brooks) is a Los Angeles advertising executive who expects to become vice president on the morrow. He and his wife, Linda (Julie Hagerty), have already made a $15,000 deposit on a $450,000 house; a yacht and a Mercedes are in the offing; and all that keeps him awake tonight is compulsive worrying. All that keeps Linda, a seemingly contented department-store personnel manager, awake is David with his nagging doubts. Small ones, mind you; the next day, he is totally unprepared for the blow of mere transferral to New York and a fancier account—no vice presidency, no immediate raise above the present $100,000, but a supposedly great opportunity to become even more “creative.” First flabbergasted, then infuriated, David insults the boss and gets himself fired. He is hysterically exultant, gets Linda to quit, too (in his eagerness for freedom, he can barely be restrained from making love to her on the desk of her glass-walled office), and they both look forward to such neo-Rousseau-ish dreams as “touching Indians.” For starters, they’re off in their new mobile home, a thirty-foot Winnebago, to Las Vegas to remarry each other at the Silver Bell Chapel; then, supported by their $145,000 nest egg obtained from liquidating their possessions, they will realize David’s fantasy of living out—with the minor improvements money can buy—his favorite movie, Easy Rider.

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John Simon

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It is too bad that in Lost in America Albert Brooks is only kidding; all the film needs to be a devastating comedy is a little seriousness. The impossibility of breaking out of the system, the robotization of the careeroriented, upwardly mobile middle-class couple who, even with a shove of fate to nudge them along, cannot start afresh in some spontaneous, grass-roots, laterally mobile way, has powerful seriocomic potential; not for nothing has Preston Sturges’s name been invoked in connection with this film. But despite a fine farcical frenzy, acute observation of everyday absurdities, and some wrenchingly comic episodes, the film cannot lift itself into high comedy, even if it towers over whatever else is around.

David Howard (Albert Brooks) is a Los Angeles advertising executive who expects to become vice president on the morrow. He and his wife, Linda (Julie Hagerty), have already made a $15,000 deposit on a $450,000 house; a yacht and a Mercedes are in the offing; and all that keeps him awake tonight is compulsive worrying. All that keeps Linda, a seemingly contented department-store personnel manager, awake is David with his nagging doubts. Small ones, mind you; the next day, he is totally unprepared for the blow of mere transferral to New York and a fancier account—no vice presidency, no immediate raise above the present $100,000, but a supposedly great opportunity to become even more “creative.” First flabbergasted, then infuriated, David insults the boss and gets himself fired. He is hysterically exultant, gets Linda to quit, too (in his eagerness for freedom, he can barely be restrained from making love to her on the desk of her glass-walled office), and they both look forward to such neo-Rousseau-ish dreams as “touching Indians.” For starters, they’re off in their new mobile home, a thirty-foot Winnebago, to Las Vegas to remarry each other at the Silver Bell Chapel; then, supported by their $145,000 nest egg obtained from liquidating their possessions, they will realize David’s fantasy of living out—with the minor improvements money can buy—his favorite movie, Easy Rider.