Cheap Route 66: A Nostalgic Ride Down America's Mother Road from Chicago to L.A. (Video) (Route 66) Price

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Customer Reviews of Route 66: A Nostalgic Ride Down America's Mother Road from Chicago to L.A.

Too much focus on the negative and patronizing
This video was actually filmed in 1985. The film focuses only on the unpleasant side of Route 66. The video overwhelmingly focuses on Christian fundamentalists "healing" each other and shrieking on the radio. The people we meet on the route are mostly religious extremists, overweight barflys, tramps, alcoholics and other assorted losers. I felt sympathy for some of these people like an unemployed, bearded man and his wife, but the video takes a patronizing view of these people. The leftist bias of the European filmmakers clearly comes through in a scene showing cattle being killed in a slaughterhouse intercut with nuclear test warnings. In Texas the filmmakers focus on a man who wants Texas to seceed from the U.S.; in New Mexico on an alcoholic Indian; in Arizona on a damaged Vietnam veteran. Chicago is shown only as a collection of hovels. Los Angeles is skid row with alcoholics and drug addicts passed out in the gutter. Nothing more. All these things exist but the video is all one sided and negative. The filmmakers apparantly were more interested in reenforcing European prejudices about America than giving us a true portrait of Route 66.

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disappointing.......
I love 40s, 50s, 60s Americana and I thought this doco would put me right in the middle of it...and yeah, it does have some great old film clips, radio broadcasts, etc. but it just seems to miss the mark for the cozy nostalgia of an 'America Past' that I was expecting. I dug the roadhouse scenes and the music. Good to see Red Steagal in action. The interviews with the locals were not all that interesting....and that Texas abattoir was simply unnecessary!! The sight of those poor beasts, some still barely alive, being picked up by one leg and hung on a conveyer belt, then hacked to pieces by the slaughterhouse gang made me sick to the stomach. The tape should come with a warning. I wont be watching it again, that's for sure.

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This one is fair, at best. For the hardcore 66er only!
If you're interested in the Mother Road and want a tape to inform and let you know how the road and people are today, you do NOT want this tape.

Filmed in the mid 80s, this tape is NOT an accurate depiction of the road as it is today.

As the road is always changing, restaurants and motels opening and closing, buildings being torn down, etc. - I found this tape useful in providing a view of 66's roadside as it was in the 80s, and not much else.