Roadie movie review & film summary (1980)

The idea for "Roadie" has a certain charm, especially with Meat Loaf in the title role. He's a large, cheerful, reasonably engaging performer who is convincing as a Texan, and no wonder: He was born in Dallas and attended no less than three Texas colleges, majoring, it says, here, in football. He plays a kid from a family of inventors; his crackpot father (Art Carney) inhabits a house jammed with gadgets and gimmicks, of which my favorite is a telephone booth that slides outside the house on a rail if you want extra privacy.

Meat Loaf happily inhabits this milieu as a beer truck driver until a rock band passes through. Their van breaks down, he fixes it, romance blossoms with the band's resident groupie (Kaki Hunter), and he's signed on for the tour. The tour is an invaluable plot device, since it explains a cross-country odyssey during which our heroes meet all sorts of famous singing stars, including Hank Williams Jr., Roy Orbison, Alice Cooper, Asleep at the Wheel, and Deborah Harrywith Blondie.

If the movie had given us more of their songs, this could have qualified as a concert movie. If it had given us more of Meat Loaf, it might have developed into a character study. But "Roadie" never makes up its mind. The movie's so genial, disorganized and episodic that we never really care about the characters, and yet whenever someone starts to sing the performance is interrupted for more meaningless plot development.

And Meat Loaf himself is badly used: His inimitable charisma and stage presence are never exploited, he never gets a chance to sing, and he disappears into his boozy role as a laid-back Good Ol' Boy when he might have helped the movie by going berserk.

There are a few good moments. One comes when a rock concert is canceled by an environmental group because it will use too much energy. Combining the best qualities of Ralph Nader and Rube Goldberg, Meat Loaf teams up a windmill, a steam boiler and a solar reflector to power the concert.