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Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place
Directed by
Alison Ellwood
,
Alex Gibney
R
2011
1h 47m
Documentary
,
Music
6.8
72%
61%
Watch Free
A freewheeling portrait of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters' fabled road trip across America.
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Cast of Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place
Ken Kesey
Self
Jerry Garcia
Self (archive footage)
Neal Cassady
Self
Phil Lesh
Self (archive footage)
Bob Weir
Self (archive footage)
Alison Ellwood
Director / Writer
Alex Gibney
Director / Writer / Producer
Alexandra Johnes
Producer
Will Clarke
Producer
Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place Ratings & Reviews
Austin Chronicle
Marc Savlov
Magic Trip goes all over the place but never seems to end up anywhere all that revelatory.
Boston Globe
Mark Feeney
It's the movie "Yellow Submarine'' should have been but didn't know how to be.
Boston Phoenix
Monica Castillo
Sometimes the footage is shaky, and the story threatens to derail itself by spinning off on too many tangents, but ultimately the rough-and-ready style fits with the experimental spirit of the Pranksters.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Joe Williams
"Magic Trip" is neither as magic nor as trippy as the culture quake that it documents, but it's a valuable flashback and a pleasurable contact high.
Seattle Times
Paul de Barros
This is the story of sunny, casual West Coast visionary utopians, told from the inside out.
Washington Post
Michael O'Sullivan
It isn't exactly boring. But it's hard being the designated driver at someone else's bacchanal.
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
To be sure, one gets a better sense of the personalities, and the passions stirring their souls, in Wolfe's book. But Magic Trip literally brings these characters to life.
Variety
John Anderson
Fans of the subject matter, especially students of the Beat era, will find this revisionist reconstruction indispensible; others will share the same tedium claimed by some of the principals on the bus.
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
The result may have value to '60s sociologists, ethnologists, superannuated hippies, and Kesey fanatics, but for the most part what is on view is a jumble of scenes featuring pranksters getting high on grass and LSD.
Los Angeles Times
Mark Olsen
Gibney and Ellwood struggle to create context for or make much sense of the vibrant hodge-podge of material that they excavated from the archives of Kesey, who died in 2001.
NPR
Mark Jenkins
The movie fails to make the cross-country jaunt function as a metaphor for the country's mid-century passage. Minus that, the Pranksters' everything-changing adventure looks a lot like just another road trip.
New York Daily News
Elizabeth Weitzman
Ken Kesey decided the camera was mightier than the pen. This enjoyable but surprisingly unenlightening documentary suggests otherwise.
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
I'm not sure I can adequately explain the '60s to someone who wasn't there. "Magic Trip" doesn't really even try.
The Hollywood Reporter
Frank Scheck
The backstory behind the film is as compelling as the events it depicts.
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
The first striking thing about the documentary is that nothing about it reads 1964.
New York Times
Stephen Holden
"Magic Trip" is the cinematic equivalent of a yellowed scrapbook whose pictures are accompanied by sketchy captions created after the fact.
AV Club
Alison Willmore
Magic Trip is about as fun as being the only sober person at a party.
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
It's like seeing the birth of the '60s, with great moments (including Neal Cassady doing speed-freak monologues).
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