The Neon Highway

Excellent unique story showing conflicted emotions re: trying to do right by others. No constant stream of unimaginative vulgarities, naked women, violence, just a good story with good actors & writers. Recommend!

That was a tough watch. Brutal, I was expecting a solid b movie. I’d rather watch ginger dead vs the evil bong. Nothing but all the most ridiculous cliches.

It was alright. Somewhat inspiring story. Good a mellow weekday evening.

No cliche goes unused in this tedious story.

It beats watching the Republican convention.

we made it a third way through. Its as bad as a hallmark movie except for bridges.

I wanted to like this. But it's really just a country music themed Hallmark movie. Scenes over plots. And who in 2024 thinks you sneak into a radio station and swap out a USB drive to all of the sudden change what the station is playing and make a song famous? Decent premise overall. Poor execution. Beau Bridges was likeable and did a good job. Literally all Rob Mayes does is pull back his hair, put a hat on, and scowl towards off camera. First half to honestly 2/3 of the movie was engaging. Fell apart terribly after that. Writers really wrote themselves into a corner. If you love county music and cheesy ass movies, then you're the 4% of the population this is for. Enjoy

I usually like nothing better than a movie about making music. But this one left me pretty cold. There wasn't enough music in it, and the story is just weird. Case in point, without too big a spoiler: the fiddle player Elton. The plot seemed to be setting it up for Elton to play with the boys -- especially when they don't have a backing band to make a demo. We hear how he comes alive when he plays. I wanted to hear him. Do we get to hear him? At all? Nup. Instead he's comic relief or something. And THE SONG. Everyone carries on like it's the greatest thing they've ever heard. Meh. Finally, the thing that gets the plot going is that the main character needs money. Really needs it. Given that, the ending makes zero sense.

There are two movies that set the template for the broken-down-country singer/songwriter-gets-one-more-shot tome: Crazy Heart from 2009, starring Beau's brother, Jeff, and 1983's Tender Mercies starring Robert Duvall. It's frustrating to see Beau, who's proven time again that he's one of our finest actors, star in the Dollar General version of those movies. This movie suffers from limited exposition and generic characterization on almost everybody except Claude Allen, played by Mr. Bridges, and it doesn't go too deep with him. The movie does do a fairly decent job of showing the struggles of an aspiring Nashville songwriter/musician and they even populate with a few real musicians (Chuck Mead from BR-549 makes an appearance, as does Pam Tillis). The cost of studio time and union musicians was pretty close to reality. There were a lot of good things in place for this film (casting, cinematography, etc.) and it would have been nice to see what this could have been with more of a budget.

Boring. Had the potential to be a compelling story but it quickly got muddled. We didn't learn enough about any of the characters to understand their motivations. Supposed to take place in Nashville but we didn't see any of Nashville as it is today, just a rural motel and roadside honkey tonks that no longer exist. If this story were set in the 90's maybe I would have believed it. The only convincing part of the setting is Beau Bridges staggering around Nashville basically as a homeless man. The second half of the story gets unnecessarily mired in a battle for the rights to a song which only serves to confuse the viewer. Again, relationships between the characters are not fleshed out enough to really connect with them. Honestly, I'm bored just trying to write this. Skip it.