I watched the new Devo documentary a few weeks back which featured clips from the band’s appearance in Neil Young’s Human Highway, and I was immediately intrigued. Based on the footage shown, it looked like a trippy good time. Well, it was certainly trippy.
There are Hollywood vanity projects and then there’s crap like this. Most vanity projects are given to actual filmmakers who have rightfully earned a chance to basically do whatever the hell they want. Sometimes though, Hollywood gives these things to people that have no business being behind the camera. Such is the case with Neil Young. Honestly, you could’ve given the camera to Crosby, Stills, OR Nash and they probably could’ve come up with something better than this.
The plot has Dean Stockwell (who co-directed with Young) taking ownership of a diner/filling station sometime after the apocalypse. As he tries to find ways to save money, the nerdy grease monkey (Young) shows the new guy (Russ Tambyln, who also served as choreographer) the ropes. Meanwhile, a bunch of sanitation workers in glowing radiation suits (Devo) drive around in a truck filled with barrels of radioactive waste.
Parts of this movie resemble an episode of Alice directed by John Waters. Others play like David Lynch’s Hee-Haw. None of it is funny, and it is painfully amateurish throughout. About halfway through, Young hits his head and dreams he’s a rock star and the rest of the movie basically plays like a long music video. This sequence also features him performing an annoying song where he dances around with Native Americans that’s filmed in headache inducing Blurry-Vision.
The cast (which includes Dennis Hopper in multiple roles) can’t save this one. All of them were probably just doing Neil a favor. Devo is the only real reason to watch it. Their songs “It Takes a Worried Man”, “Come Back Jonee”, and their duet with Young on “Hey Hey, My My” make it (mostly) tolerable. (They may seem like an odd pairing, but Devo was formed at Kent State during the massacre and Young wrote “Ohio” about it, so it makes sense that they’d be kindred spirits.) It’s the band’s mascot Booji Boy who steals the show. He probably deserved his own movie.
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