In recent years, Woody Harrelson has become better known for his environmental activism than for his dwindling movie career.
One of the things he’s been working on, it turns out, is “Go Further,” a documentary about his cause of “sustainable living.” It opens today, the same day as a more conventional Harrelson multiplex effort, “After the Sunset.”
This hippie-dippy non-fiction feature follows Woody and his pals as they trek from Seattle to L.A. in the summer of 2001. Some folks are bicycling, some are riding in a flower-power-painted school bus.
Along the way – and beginning with a talk at the University of Washington – Harrelson gives speeches before crowds of young people, mostly at colleges. He doesn’t come on as a radical, but as that guy from “Cheers,” with folksy inspiration about saving the earth one person at a time.
On his bus, Harrelson travels with a raw-food chef, a yoga instructor, a Web site director, and assorted alternative types. The movie shrewdly watches the trip through the eyes of a young guy named Steve Clark, a junk-food enthusiast and regular Joe, who met Harrelson while working as an assistant on a TV show.
He’s as skeptical but as curious as the average audience member, and he loves his candy bars and burgers. Milk, too, until Harrelson informs him of what gets into milk after cows have been treated with bovine growth hormone.
The film is assembled, to use that word loosely, around vignettes on the road and snippets of Woody’s speeches. Steve Clark picking up a college girl in California is about as exciting as it gets, and a visit with Ken Kesey in Oregon, to check out the painted bus Kesey drove on his legendary counterculture journey of the 1960s, is unremarkable.
There are also musical interludes, featuring the extremely sincere likes of Natalie Merchant, Dave Matthews and Bob Weir, among others.
At first glance, the movie feels like it’s going to be a long slog. It exists in the loosey-goosey haze that surrounds many surfing movies, where everybody on screen is so blissed-out they barely seem awake. Just as you’re about to dismiss this caravan of herb-friendly tree-huggers (inevitably, there are scenes of hackey-sack and naked running on the beach), Harrelson’s beaming goodwill takes over.
He’s a goofball, but he’s a goofball with a simple message. He makes a good case for how we might use less wood and more hemp to make paper, and why it would be easy to eat and grow food that doesn’t actually punish our bodies or the earth.
Most importantly, Harrelson’s approach is that change begins with oneself, rather than aiming to destroy the stereotypical evil corporation. This isn’t much of a movie, but it will probably succeed in making a few people curious.
Woody Harrelson speaks to a large audience in “Go Further.”
“Go Further” HH
Ramshackle: Documentary about Woody Harrelson’s trip down the West Coast in 2001, delivering speeches about “sustainable living” and riding a painted bus. The whole thing is very hippie-dippy, although Harrelson’s beaming goodwill and simple message come through.
Rated: Not rated; probably PG-13 for nudity, language.
Now showing: Varsity.
“Go Further” HH
Ramshackle: Documentary about Woody Harrelson’s trip down the West Coast in 2001, delivering speeches about “sustainable living” and riding a painted bus. The whole thing is very hippie-dippy, although Harrelson’s beaming goodwill and simple message come through.
Rated: Not rated; probably PG-13 for nudity, language.
Now showing: Varsity.
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