Albert Brooks is a wonderful talent, somewhat of a Woody Allen offshoot, and his script writing is witty and has just the right amount of offbeat humour to it.
The film has a great premise, and the characters are realistic and sympathetic enough to retain attention, but it moves too fast and feels underdeveloped. It starts out with Howard (Brooks) established as a moderately successful advertising executive, who with his managerial wife, plan to put a down payment on a 400k house. But the corporate lifestyle has sapped some of the excitement out of both their lives, and before divorce proceedings set in, they hilariously quit their jobs and set out on the open road to find themselves. And along the way they bring the 'nest egg'.
Unfortunately, things don't go as planned, and the soul searching quickly becomes a trip through hell. With each quagmire the couple finds themselves in, Brooks' character hilariously pleads with the people he sees as obstacles to their luck. The film is built around 3 or 4 of these lengthy, seemingly improvised sketch scenes, and is what provides most of the entertainment apart from the scenario. But after the main twist and conflict happens, the film loses steam and the hijinx quickly dissipitate until the film deflates at the end.
Little soul searching actually occurs, and the film has a realistic, but disappointing ending after much of the build up to their quagmire. The ending just isn't what was promised after the dark hilarity of misfortune that preceded it. The characters feel annoyingly self entitled at first, and start to grate, but the writing and short running times keeps things feeling fresh long enough to want to finish.
Worth watching just for Brooks.
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