June 14, 1980 movie review: "Roadie"

Anybody remember this turkey? 

June 14, 1980 

Meat Loaf Main Course

In Half-Baked 'Roadie'

"Roadie" is a Texas joke, a gross and silly movie about the brutish backstage world of rock 'n roll. And like Texas jokes, its overblown humor is infectious as it careens giddily from coast to coast to coast.

Shanghaied into this manic musical subculture is a tall, tubby, beer-truck-driving Texas named Travis W. Redfish, whose junkyard home is half Rube Goldberg and half "Pink Flamingos." The family motto: "Everything works if you let it."

It is Redfish's fate to fall for a lurid 16-year-old groupie who quickly bends him and his incredible talent for fixing things to assist her grand designs. She wants to become a camp follower of ghoulish rock star Alice Cooper. 

With its fast cutting, boisterous slapstick and heavy lampooning of rock 'n roll's behind-the-scenes characters, "Roadie" works itself up into a fine lather of lunacy for 85 of its 95 minutes. Then it simply collapses on its face like an overworked stagehand.

The best thing about "Roadie" is the 285-pound singer Meat Loaf. As the amazing fix-it man, his Baby Huey physique and mentality inspire the best parts of the movie, and he brings them off with fine comic timing. Television actress Kaki Hunter is appropriately shrill and screwy as Lola, the groupie. 

Veteran Art Carney adds an air of respectability to this exercise, Sly and slovenly, he presides as the gadget-crazy patriarch of the junkyard. "Soul Train's" Don Cornelius adds authenticity as the deliciously evil Mohammed Johnson, promoter and ringmaster of the Rock 'N Roll Circus that kidnaps our hero.

"Roadie" is at its worst as a concert movie. The stars drift in and out, but with rare exception their performances are broken up by comic buffoonery. Poor Asleep at the Wheel, standing there taking it all. That's Hollywood.

One who escapes this torture is Blondie's Deborah Harry, who is particularly gorgeous and fiery. The other is Alice Cooper, who gets to show off parts of two songs and play a much-harassed superstar.

Rated R, probably because of its language, it's showing at the Amherst, Como Mall and Towne theaters and the Boulevard and Broadway Drive-Ins. 

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IN THE PHOTO: The theater poster for "Roadie." 

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FOOTNOTE: Rotten Tomatoes gave "Roadie" a score of 14%, which is pretty darn rotten. Critic Roger Ebert generously allowed it 1 1/2 stars out of four, noting, "The movie's so genial, disorganized and episodic that we never really care about the characters, and yet whenever someone starts to sing the performance is interrupted for more meaningless plot development." The critic in People magazine wrote that Meat Loaf "doesn’t sing a note and still steals the movie. Not that there’s much to steal." It cost $4.7 million to make and only managed $4.2 million at the box office. 

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