Road House (R)

“Road House” should not be watched as a good movie. Sometimes it’s so bad it’s good, that it might be better watching it with someone as just a fun bad movie. After my first viewing, however, this is more often just bad. Some films are style over substance but this is a mindless actioner that’s simply testosterone over substance. 

The film follows bar cooler – a head bouncer –  Dalton (Patrick Swayze) as he’s hired to clean up a dirty bar called the Double Deuce in the small town of Jasper, Missouri. It’s so dirty that the band plays behind a fence as people throw beer bottles at them.

Dalton’s considered the best bouncer in the business, so of course everyone comments on how they thought he’d be bigger. His name is said in hushed tones because of his reputation and mysterious past. His main rule as a bouncer is being nice until you must be mean.

There a few not terrible things about this movie. The music is decent as the Jeff Healey Band plays at the bar throughout. Healey portrays Cody, a blind sort-of wise man who’s just there as an exposition fairy.

The stunts are decent and the bar brawls are okay, and there’s a lot of those. A lakeside fight with a main baddie is some good, fun, too. There’s a lot of kicking, but there’s not enough fun throughout – so that episode of “Family Guy” when Peter kicks something and says “Road House” is way more entertaining.

The finale has the most consistent action, but the time we get there, it’s a bit too exhausting to care. Most of the conflict is because of drunk idiots getting easily offended and starting a bar brawl.

One such incident: A guy asking another bar ptron if he wants to kiss his wife’s boobs for $20 and when the guy plays with them like a kid trying to win a prize, but doesn’t have $20, the seller punches him in the face. It’s one of the better so good it’s bad moments.

The film’s narrative is generally weak and Dalton just stirs the pot of the town and causes conflict by firing a bunch of employees and Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzara), the generic villain who basically controls the town, doesn’t like it. He hates it even more when Dalton keeps beating up his goons and then the conflicts get even more petty.

Wesley is a corrupt rich prick who prides himself on building the town. We literally meet him after he’s flown over a neighboring farm – where Dalton is renting a barn – and he just smiles at them from across the way because he’s a dick and scared the animals. He’s either smiling at the destruction he’s caused or randomly staring at people like when he watches Dalton doing martial arts stretching.

Wesley’s main henchman is named Jimmy (Marshall R. Teague), a jerk with Aviator sunglasses and a shark-tooth necklace. He doesn’t have much characterization and is all one-liners. “I f—ked guys like you in prison,” he says to Dalton, either flirting or threatening. His one-liners seem more like innuendo instead of threats. Wesley also wants Dalton’s ass for his trophy room, so there’s innuendo abound.

Half of his scenes are pointless, especially when he swerves across the road in his car and forces Dalton to drive off the road. It’s baffling that some of his scenes – and many pointless scenes in general – made the final cut and Keith David’s role was reduced to one line. Some characters seem to just less and less screen time as the thing goes on (especially Kathleen Wilhoite as Carrie) to where they just don’t have lines, likely because of editing. It’s just nutty how this is nearly two hours. Some scenes seem to have stayed just because they have nudity.

Women are mostly eye candy. There’s a romance with Dalton and Elizabeth “Doc” Clay (Kelly Lynch). She comes in around the 40-minute mark but we don’t get a character name until nearly 30 minutes later. So many characters come in randomly that I forgot that she was a doctor who treated Dalton. Dalton literally calls her Doc because she’s a doctor. She’s a niece of Red Webster (Red West), whose store name is Red’s Auto Parts even though it totally looks more like a grocery store.

Anyway, Swayze and Lynch’s chemistry is fine but they don’t talk like real people. I’m not sure how much this dialogue is logical as Elizabeth says “You live some kind-of a life, Dalton,” and he replies, “Hmm, too ugly for you?” The way the conversations go make zero sense and Rowdy Terrington’s direction of a lot of talking scenes feels awkward since they’re so pointless. There are also awkward pauses abound as actors just go through the motions. Especially when the relationship between Elizabeth was trying to be playful in romance I just wanted them to go back to punching things.

Dalton is at his best while fighting, but he’s generally boring. The cast try their best, and the film also features Sam Elliot as a cool-talking mentor. Terry Funk plays a bouncer called Morgan – he has some great lines like “I heard you had balls big enough to come in a dump truck but you don’t look like much to me,” but I’m just going to remember him for looking like Stone Cold Steve Austin but with hair.

The writing simultaneously kills the movie and makes it memorable. A lot of the one-liners are awful especially when Dalton just starts cracking them left and right during the finale and they’re not that good. With terrible writing comes confusing lines like when Red Webster tries to answer a question with a resounding yes by saying, “Does a hobby horse have a wooden dick?” I don’t think they do, but he evidently thinks so.

The writing isn’t supposed to be good since everyone is kicking ass and there a lot of bar brawls. In that respect, “Road House” achieves exactly what it’s trying to – a mindless movie with Swayze kicking people – but I wasn’t that entertained.

– by Daniel Prinn