Dudes - hold me tight, the desert is shaking!

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Movie
German title Dudes - hold me tight, the desert is shaking!
Original title Dudes
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1987
length 86 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Penelope Spheeris
script Randall Jahnson
production Herb Jaffe ,
Miguel Tejada-Flores
music Charles Bernstein
camera Robert Richardson
cut Andy Horvitch
occupation

Dudes - hold me tight, the desert is shaking! (Original: Dudes ) is an American Western - road movie with comedic elements of Penelope Spheeris from since 1987.

action

New York punk rockers Grant, Biscuit and Milo have had enough of their boring lives and want to travel to California with their VW Beetle . On the way they visit several sights, where Grant hallucinates of a riding cowboy. When all three set up camp in the wilderness at night, they are attacked and robbed by a rocker gang so that they have to flee together into the wilderness. However, Milo is caught by Missoula, the leader of the rocker gang, and grants and biscuits are shot in front of his eyes. Milo's body cannot be found later, so the police cannot help. Grant and Biscuit decide to take revenge on Missoula together. You sit on his track and travel to Montana after him. In Utah they get to know the beautiful Jessie and by chance they get back on the trail of Missoula, which they follow along the country road. They have an accident with their vehicle so that Missoula can escape.

Jessie takes them both to her farm and takes care of their injuries. The next morning she brings Grant closer to the cowboy life by showing him how to shoot with a revolver and how to ride properly . While Grant is allowed to feel like a real cowboy on a horse ride, Biscuit sleeps longer and dreams of an Indian tribe that is overrun and killed by the cavalry. Since one of the cavalrymen is Missoula, Biscuit sympathizes with the Indians, and from then on feels like one and behaves like one.

Grant and Biscuit then go on the hunt for Missoula again and initially unsuccessfully look for him in a rodeo show in Feckerville, Wyoming . They are then led by Grant's hallucination, the riding cowboy Witherspoon, to Cottonwood , Arizona , where they quickly come across Missoula. Biscuit and Grant do not attack him immediately, but wait until dusk, because Missoula and his men want to watch Jesse James, the man without the law in the local cinema. The two arm themselves and follow the gang to the cinema. There they start their own shooting with Missoula's men during the big showdown scene of the film, which, however, turns out to be in Missoula's favor, so that Grant and Biscuit flee into the arms of the police, who immediately arrest and lock them up. But Missoula has not yet had enough, storms the police station and gradually kills all police officers before he enters the cell block. The situation seems hopeless for Grant and Biscuit, but Jessie suddenly appears and helps them break out. Gradually, Grant and Biscuit kill all of Missoula's men, and Grant chases the fleeing Missoula into an old factory building, where he then kills him.

criticism

Despite some very "interesting [and] strange" characters with a certain "eccentric touch," said Janet Maslin in the liberal New York Times , this story of "bored city rebels in search of meaning and purpose" is replaced by the "scenic , largely unmotivated action that is played without conviction ”.

"Even if one were inclined to overlook the non-original plot," wrote the Variety magazine, Dudes would always succeed in "throwing one out of the saddle". And even if the humor is mostly slapstick , it doesn't make the film any better, since the "dialogues are hopelessly youthful, the music is incredibly loud and the plot is dependent on a bizarre sequence of coincidences".

Thanks to a few “good visuals”, “a bad script can be turned into an entertaining film,” said Michael Wilmington in the Los Angeles Times . He praised Richardson's camerawork and said that Penelope Spheeris treated the material with "pleasure [and] an eye for humor." However, only those who are “not looking for sophisticated entertainment or intelligent drama” are satisfied with the film.

The lexicon of international film saw the film as a "confused mixture of underground, road movie and western, which ironically ironizes American myths and clichés, but ultimately takes itself inappropriately seriously."

background

Jon Cryer stated in an interview that if he could talk to the former self, he would advise him not to watch movies that “sound like gay porn,” which Dudes , Hot Shots! - The mother of all films and Morgan cleans up counts.

Spheeris herself was hired because she herself combined the culture of the west with punk rock and heavy metal with her trilogy The Decline of Western Civilization .

publication

After the film had its world premiere on September 18, 1987 at the Toronto International Film Festival , it was shown in theaters in Australia on February 18, 1988 and in the USA on June 24, 1988. In Germany it was released directly on VHS on August 28, 1989 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Janet Maslin : Dudes (1987) on nytimes.com, June 24, 1988, accessed October 11, 2011
  2. ↑ Dudes on variety.com of December 31, 1986 (English), accessed October 11, 2011
  3. ↑ Michael Wilmington: MOVIE REVIEW: 'Dudes' Barely Overcomes a Mediocre Script on latimes.com from July 1, 1988 (English), accessed April 11, 2012
  4. ↑ 'Two and a Half Men' star Jon Cryer Cracks Wise on doorly.com , accessed October 11, 2011