"Rude Awakening" is an attempt to do the ever popular fish-out-of-water theme, a la "E.T." or " `Crocodile' Dundee," by placing '60s hippies in '80s Manhattan. (Even one of the film's last lines echoes "E.T.," as a character says "Be good.")
Actually, the plot isn't a bad idea, especially with the comedian who best represents the counterculture, Cheech Marin (as in Cheech & Chong), as one of the protagonists.
But the result is a movie with only a few amusing gags — all emanating from Marin's spaced-out character — while the rest of the film is at best bland and at worst obnoxious.
The story begins with four New York hippies — Cheech Marin, Eric Roberts, Julie Hagerty and Robert Carradine — smoking marijuana and "doing their thing" in 1969.
Roberts is the leader of the group, Hagerty is his girlfriend and Marin is his best buddy, who has been overdosed on LSD a few too many times in a wacky government experiment designed to convert war protesters into soldiers.
When the feds come after Marin and Roberts for draft evasion (led by ridiculous Cliff DeYoung), they flee to South America and set up a commune, where they do little besides smoke dope for 20 years.
Finally, in 1989, the country is invaded by guerrillas, and Roberts and Marin come across some top secret papers that prove the United States is about to start a war there. So they return to New York City to turn the papers over to the press.
But that's not really what the picture's about. Rather, it's merely a device to get them back to New York after 20 years of isolation.
So instead of simply giving the papers to a journalist, they first reunite with Hagerty, now a millionaire artist, and Carradine, a yuppie who sells tanning salons. And for the bulk of the film the humor has to do with their giving Roberts and Marina a crash course in what's happened over the past 20 years. In the process — surprise, surprise — they all become disillusioned with what America has become.
During all this Marin has the best lines, as when he tries to comprehend what a tanning salon is by asking how Carradine manages to get the sun to shine only on the people who pay him.
The rest of the movie rolls from spacey comedy to sentimental left-wing preaching, a blend that is uneven to say the least. But "Rude Awakening" really reaches the lowest depths of bad filmmaking in an unfortunate centerpiece, obviously meant to be a big laugh-getter.
In this scene Carradine and his uptight wife Cindy Williams entertain the very stiff Buck Henry and Andrea Martin so they can buy a co-op. Naturally, Marin, Roberts and Hagerty crash the party with predictable results.
But the entire lengthy scene is such a broad cartoon skit that it seems thoroughly out of place with the rest of the film. Andrea Martin in particular does an idiotic caricature that is so false it just becomes annoying.
Then there are the hallucinations that Marin sees from time to time, in particular the fish with whom he shares a joint.
The comic supporting cast tries hard to breathe life into the proceedings, though the casting of Roberts is baffling since he displays no comic sense whatsoever.
The film is such a mess it's surprising to see that, of all people, Marin is the sole saving grace. In the end even he can't save the film, but you can't help wondering what he could do if he ever got a decent script.
"Rude Awakening" is rated R for considerable marijuana usage and profanity, along with some violence, vulgarity and nudity.