Bass Ackwards
Bass Ackwards
| 23 January 2010 (USA)
Bass Ackwards Trailers

A man coming off a disastrous affair with a married woman has a lyrical, strange and comedic cross-country journey in a modified VW bus.

Reviews
PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.
Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.
Aubrey Hackett While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.
Lucia Ayala It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
zif ofoz for me this movie started out with a real story and characters you can believe in as real. then as the 'road trip' starts the main character becomes less and less believable and the story becomes more and more improbable.and to add to the disbelief the people he meets along the way are just weird and goofy. the man he lets rest in the van - i don't believe Linas would just open the door to a complete stranger - and then they become best friends! and the store owner seems a bit mental and off. then proves himself to be a caring person - why would he go to the trouble to tell Linas, what was the incentive?this flick just has too many holes and loose ends for me to like it. it is a movie wanting to be more but keeps scraping bottom on the speed bumps throughout the story.
Richard Harris After watching this film I have yet to find a reason why I sat through the whole thing! I cannot find anything positive to say about this film. It is lack lustre, lacking in comedy, lacking in story line and the plot outline is an over descript outline of its reality.This story could be told in about 10 minutes and still have the comedic value it presents as a full length movie.If you enjoy watching paint dry then you may just enjoy this film! My apologies to the producer, but in my opinion this is awful!If you intend passing an hour and a half of your time, if you can find something else to do, it would far more rewarding than sitting through this.
dave-sturm I follow film websites and picked up a film festival buzz about this movie. I spotted it on Fios pay-per-view and said "what the heck." I like micro-budget films if they are original (being from Baltimore, check out our home boy Matthew Porterfield).That said, this movie enthralled me. In my youth in the 60s and 70s, I spent a certain amount of time on the road. I hitchhiked from Boston to Provincetown almost effortlessly in 1972. I traveled all around the Baltimore/D.C. area on my thumb. I fear those days are over. Not sure why. But I met a lot of interesting people along the way.Anyway, a lot of those reminiscences came back watching "Bass Ackwards." Linas, our hero, has basically gotten kicked out of Seattle. No one there who he thought he was tight with wants him around anymore. He ends up on an alpaca farm to make a few bucks and the owner is glad to give Linas his rattletrap VW microbus, a ridiculous vehicle in any man's motor pool. Linas hits the road.Linas' parents are glad to hear he's on the way home to where they live in Boston. But you can tell they are dubious over what he's up to. They definitely do not want him as a permanent boarder.Bottom line, Linas is leaving nowhere and headed nowhere. All that matters is what happens to him along the way. And interesting things happen. He picks up and befriends a guy with heavy marital baggage. He flirts with a girl he does not know is married and ends up in a punch-out. He runs out of gas and has to do a Christopher Walken imitation in Lithuanian to get the gas he needs (I kid you not).It's not much of a spoiler to say Linas lands in an intriguing place in NYC and we see the beginnings of his new life. In fact, the movie ends abruptly where you are really curious what come next. Nevermind. He'll be OK.This is wonderful independent American cinema. And, one of the best American road movies ever made.
HeathCliff-2 I also related to the movie, have wanted to see it ever since Sundance, and YouTube's pay release window. I found it easy to get into the rhythm of the film. I liked the sweetness of it, that it took its time, and that it had none of the smugness and self-consciousness hipness of many indie, and most studio, films. I had the same reaction to it as I did to sex, lies and videotape 20 years ago, feeling like this was a film that was again pushing the boundaries of film-making, pushing the margins to more authenticity, naturalism, etc. It's similar, but different than other indie or road films. It feels post-slacker, post- irony, post hollow-culture-formula-action movies, post-judgmental us- against-them contemporary stuff. It also redefined hetero men as I find them today, less afraid to be sensitive, unclear about what roles are today, not as phonily macho and cool as portrayed in Hollywood films. I know more people like Linas than I do leading men in mainstream films. That probably goes for the characters he meets on the road, somewhat more like people in LA, than those who inhabit studio films. The film was somewhat lacking in plot, and I was slightly itchy, but only slightly. Mostly I fell into the rhythm of the film, happy to be with Linas on his road adventure, as he experienced himself and his solitaryness in a way that was quite relatable for all of us.