Directed by Ron Mann
With Woody Harrelson, Steve Clarke and Ken Kesey
Classification: 14A
Rating: * * ½
Old hippies never die, they just get recycled as environmental activists.
That's the spirit of Ron Mann's new documentary, Go Further, which follows actor Woody Harrelson and an entourage — a yoga teacher, an activist, a vegetarian cook and a junk-food addict — as they travel down the West Cost of the United States from Oregon through California on their "Simple Organic Living" lecture tour.
As they bicycle or ride in their hemp-fuelled bus, the gang meet various organic entrepreneurs, witness clear-cut logging and crop-dusting, and preach their walk with a light footprint message to cheering crowds of college kids.
The film takes its name from the bus that carried author Ken Kesey ( One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and the Merry Pranksters across America 40 years ago, a journey chronicled in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Kesey died shortly after appearing in a scene here, where he shows Harrelson the original dilapidated bus.
Mann's previous archive-rich documentaries have covered such counterculture subjects as comic books, jazz, spoken word poetry, the Twist and marijuana.
By comparison, Go Further is documentary-lite, as Mann contents himself with following the tour, occasionally staging scenes and riffing off whatever quirky moments arise. Though the film pays homage to the Sixties counterculture, the inspiration could as easily be late-night infomercials, with their combination of feel-good messages and celebrity pitches.
Technically, Mann's film reflects his typical polished editing, seamlessly blending road anecdotes with environmentally friendly messages, bits of animation and musical performances (Natalie Merchant, Dave Matthews, Bob Weir).
Most of the characters we meet on the journey are cheerful solution-providers: a woman who runs a paper company that doesn't hurt trees, an organic farmer, a man who sells natural fertilizer and a group of eco-warriors, who rehearse techniques for demonstrations.
Though the mood is celebratory, the film doesn't disguise the zeal, and sometimes preciousness, of the characters. Harrelson, in contrast to his goofball sitcom persona, displays a priestly self-importance: "If we can just change one person's mind..."
And you don't have to be a Scotch-and-steak barbarian to wince when the entourage's raw-foods chef suggests they eat dinner outside because it's more "joyful."
Comic relief is provided by Steve Clarke, a production assistant from the television comedy Will & Grace and a confessed junk-food addict, who learns to give up cigarettes, milk and chocolate. Healthiness leads to horniness, and a subplot follows Steve as he picks up an English college student and convinces her to join the tour. Soon Woody is telling her she can clear up her pimples if she stops drinking milk.
If the tour was about winning one mind at a time, the girl's boyfriend (seen watching miserably while she packs) can probably be counted as a failure.
Aimed at the willing to be converted, though not the sophisticated, Go Further risks placing entertainment above complexity. A repeated shtick involves Steve's discovery that milk produced by cows injected with bovine growth hormone is filled with "blood and pus," though blood and pus in themselves cause no harm in pasteurized milk.
The reason Canadian health authorities have rejected the use of bovine growth hormone is because the drug could have links to cancer, diabetes and immune-system problems. This feels a little like saying, "George Bush ducked his National Guard duty," while forgetting that long list of more serious charges.
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