Lost in America

Lost in America is being called a yuppie comedy, but it's really about the much more universal subjects of greed, hedonism and panic. What makes it so funny is how much we can identify with it. Read full review

The empty promise of the American dream is the implicit subject of most of his films, but in Lost in America, they’re the most exquisitely drawn. Failure and pettiness haunt David and Linda, and Brooks finds compelling ways to frame them. Read full review

Albert Brooks is one of the few, maybe the only, comic filmmakers making movies today with laughs that hurt. A very funny--and therefore neurotic--young man, Brooks places himself in all sorts of contemporary situations in his movies, situations that force him to whine like a baby to get what he wants. He's the filmmaker for the Baby Boom generation. Read full review

Lost In America is equally potent as a satire of the road movie and of the American dream of endless mobility and escape. Read full review

A yuppie mid-life crisis is in the offing, and Albert Brooks has made it the basis for Lost in America, an inspired comedy in his own drily distinctive style. Read full review

No one portrays and skewers really intelligent morons the way Albert Brooks does. Oddly enough Lost in America has a lot of similarities to everybody’s favorite TV show Green Acres. They are both about men who have dropped out of society and their inability to convince all the insane people in their world about the usefulness of common sense and rationality in an insane world. Read full review

The peril of making a movie about monochromatic people is that you'll make a monochromatic movie, and Brooks hasn't entirely avoided this problem. Basically, his imagination doesn't include other people: the audience is trapped inside one insanity and starts to crave variety. Still, few comics cut so close to the bone of daily life, and that's to be cherished. [25 Feb 1985, p.85]

Both leads are likeable and have the cutting neuroses that Brooks delivers so well. They can’t really carry the film until the dramatic plot twist but from then on its all good fun. Read full review

Brooks, who directed and cowrote with Monica Johnson, is irrepressible but always very human. Read full review

Just when it seemed Albert Brooks had gotten his creative energies under control, along comes this intermittently funny, often overdone comedy that could have been a classic. Read full review