Pluskylang Great Film overall

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

ChampDavSlim The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

laminur I will not read reviews anymore. For me this movie is not funny as some people said, nor gave me anything. I didn't laugh at any scene...Two idiot persons.. Albert Brook has been talking too much and made me bored... What I concluded reading IMDb reviews and looking at the grades is that American like American films, Indian like Indian films and grades get high accordingly. of course there are films getting high grades and positive comments from all over the world; I like that kind of movies. The reason of I don't like this film might be because our pleasure has been changed from 30 years. So I decided not to watch the movies from 80's :)

Rob Starzec Lost in America shows that Albert Brooks is a unique individual, who can tell a realistic story with dialogue and structure that are just as quirky as his character, David Howard. We start with what is clearly an unhappy couple having a tense discussion about how their life will play out in the next few days. David will get a promotion, the two of them will move to a new house, and everything will be fine. It is when David does not get the promotion he expects that everything changes, and the couple has to learn to live spontaneously.Wait though, because this can't just happen – the characters have to learn/make mistakes in order to change their outlook on life. David is still very methodical, planning to use a specific amount of money for one thing and carefully spend the rest on luxuries after the two are remarried. Unfortunately, the film resides to making a dumb character out of his wife Linda, who loses all of their money (except $820) on an entire night of playing roulette. Because God forbid we have a thoughtful female for the protagonist's wife in this film about finding the self.To me, the pacing of this film seems a little off – it is quick and funny at some parts, but these parts are cut between some scenes that are overly long with few cuts and tons of dialogue to preach the message of the film to the viewer, the message being when times are tough it is important not to lose the sense of self.The second half of the film is not as predictable as the first half, particularly the delightful turn at the conclusion of the film. With the tone of the film set, I knew this film would have a happy ending, but what I was expecting did not involve David getting his previous job back, because it kind of goes against the themes presented in the middle of the film. I enjoyed the nice surprise though, and things were clear to me when David asked if he should "eat s***" in New York – it made the scene where he examines a dream car passing by a lot more relevant than I had taken that scene to be. While most of the film force feeds the importance of living life by your own terms (especially with too many references to Easy Rider) David getting his "executive" job back at the end shows that, as I have read somewhere before, financial stability can equal emotional stability at times.

Joseph Harder I notice from the IMDb ratings that his film only gets a 6.9 rating overall. Ridiculous. Somebody once called Albert Brooks the funniest man in America. To be honest, i second that emotion. This film, which I always delight in when I get the chance to watch it. ( Which is very, very rarely) packs more genuine laughter into a single word- "nest egg")- than a hundred gr5oss-out comedies and a thosuand dirty words, put together. I rarely agreed with the critic John Simon, but he put it well. Watching this exquisite film, you laugh so hard you cry. And what happens when you laugh and cry all at once? You see rainbows. Moral of the film. The next time you have a large amount of money and decide to drive across America in a Winnebago, drive through Utah, not Nevada.

mcfly-31 Mild chucklefest about a bored ad exec approaching 40 who talks his wife into abandoning their jobs for life on the road. Your typical Albert Brooks offering, which of course, is not for all tastes. Some can take to his light style of humor like addicts to coke, while others will scream how mediocre this film is to be held up as an example at screen-writing classes.Most of Brooks' humor in his films come from his characters being utterly flummoxed by life or his grinny observations about everyday people. You get that usual array here, but unlike some of his other efforts, this Brooks screenplay seemed oddly malnourished. He gets caught up in this whole "Easy Rider" nonsense and places the film's more humorous and intriguing moments at the front. The business with Hagerty and the casino happens so quickly, that it a) uses the best device too fast, and b) seems too out of character for her. Brooks needed more time spent on the road meeting goofy locals and emptying his RV's chemical toilet that would eventually prompt Hagerty to do what she does early. And therein lies the film's bigger problem: they only really have one predicament. Once they hit their financial nadir, they look for jobs, work them for one day, and the film ends with a cop-out minutes later.Sorry to forward-project, but I was a GREAT admirer of Brooks' "Defending Your Life". It had his usual breezy, near lulling atmosphere on display, but with the life-after-death exploration as a great backdrop, that filmed worked better. "Lost in America" just sort of coasts along with random vignettes before breaking down at the side of the road.