Documentary. R. 1 hour, 30 minutes. At the Chez Artiste.
The Grateful Dead line “What a long, strange trip it’s been” seems particularly apt in the context of “Magic Trip,” a (counter-)cultural artifact in which the legendary 1964 cross-country bus tour by Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters is revisited, up close and out-of-sync, thanks to a trove of footage shot by Kesey and his stoned-out companions.
The connection between the Dead and the celebrated author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Sometimes a Great Notion” — kindred spirits in the early, extravagant use of psychedelics — is alluded to in “Magic Trip.” (The band’s pre-Dead incarnation, the Warlocks, supplied music for many of Kesey’s storied “acid tests.”) But it’s the acid-fueled soap opera going on among Kesey, Neal Cassady and various pals, scribes, spouses, and hangers-on who pile onto the rainbow-hued school bus that’s at the heart of this rollicking road pic.
Co-directed by Oscar-winner Alex Gibney (“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”) and his longtime editor, Alison Ellwood, “Magic Trip” offers contextualizing narration by Stanley Tucci, after-the-fact interviews with various principals, and even animated sequences to evoke the hallucinogenic fervor experienced by Kesey and gang.
But all you really have to do is look into their eyes. Cassady, the inspiration for Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” comes off as especially manic.
And Kesey emerges as a contemplative and affable soul — a college jock- turned-LSD philosopher in search of enlightenment.
