I would describe this film as a cross between a Bing Crosby/Bob Hope road movie and a Cheech and Chong drug flick, except that makes Highway sound much, much better than it is. This aimless, half formed effort takes a bunch of talented actors and then has them do nothing of any importance or relevance. The story is a bunch of arbitrarily connected episodes that unspool into an ending that flies in the face of logic and common sense. The characters are cartoonishly exaggerated. The direction is utterly unremarkable, save for the inexplicable use of slow motion at seemingly random moments.
The alleged heroes of this tale are Jack Hayes (Jared Leto) and Pilot Kelson (Jake Gyllenhaal). Jack is a walking penis who, despite having lots and lots of sex, hasn't had an orgasm in 5 years. Pilot is an awkward, virginal drug dealer who actually seems more out of it sober than he does stoned. The two are childhood friends who grew up in Las Vegas and appear to have stopped their emotional development at the age of 11.
After Jack gets caught screwing a rich man's wife, he and Pilot flee to Seattle to avoid the rich man's thugs breaking Jack's feet. They have various misadventures along the way, such as picking up a beautiful but tough hitchhiker named Cassie (Selma Blair) that Jack falls in love with, teaming up with a 40something, omnipurpose, counter-culture drug dealer named Johnny the Fox (John C. McGinley) and checking out an alligator boy, before arriving in Seattle during the vigil for the recently suicided Kurt Kobain.
As those and other sadly contrived plot developments are unrolled, we also get a bunch of characterization in Jack and Pilot that arrives out of nowhere, amounts to nothing and then vanishes into the ether. It's like the movie is trying to hint at the supposed deep and profound friendship between our two lead characters and how it's being tested in this journey. Which isn't a bad idea
but writer Scott Rosenberg and director James Cox handle it with all the subtlety of an overcooked bean burrito.
The only honest enjoyment to be found in Highway is in the performance of the cast. They're playing people who are stupid, annoying and contemptible but it's still fun to watch the energy and effort they put into them. It's a little like smelling something so foul that you're impressed by how much you're repulsed. Jeremy Piven, in particular, almost gives himself a stroke as Pilot's colossally over-the-top drug connection.
There are a very few moments when Highway flirts with running completely off the rails and becoming a surrealistic farce. If it had gone that direction, maybe it would have mutated into something worth seeing. However, the movie always falls back into its own poorly conceived and executed simulation of reality.
Highway is the type of film that merits nothing more than a shrug. It's clear what the filmmakers are trying to do and very clear that they're not doing it all that well. Unless you're already high as a kite and capable of delighting in anything that moves and makes noise, take a pass on this movie.
