Need I explain to you movie fans what a "road picture" is? Well, it isn't one with Hope & Crosby. It's where the protagonists are going somewhere and we get to go along. That is, really going somewhere, shot on the move in various locations along the way, unlike the Hope & Crosby pictures which were shot on sound stages in front of painted backgrounds.

      One classic example is "Five Easy Pieces" staring the one and only Jack Nicholson. However, that's not the Nicholson Road Picture I had in mind. There's another, lesser-known movie that's as thin (thin as in specific) of a slice of life as "Five", namely 1973's "The Last Detail". A poignant, hard-edged comedy/drama of two Navy Chief Petty Officers (CPOs): Billy "Bad-Ass" Buddusky (Nicholson) and Mule Muhall (Otis Young), who are detailed to conduct a teenaged, naive neophyte seaman, Larry Meadows (Randy Quaid, then just 22) via rail to the Portsmouth "brig" where he's facing a sentence of eight years of hard time for robbing a charity donation box of less than fifty dollars!

      Billy and Mule start out just wanting to get this "*#@!!*" detail over with, dump this "*#@!!*"kid off at the "*#@!!*" brig and get on to other points on their separate ways, using what little leftover time they have for their own pursuits. Their mutual attitude begins to change as they see that Meadows is nothing more than a big, dumb, kleptomaniac child, who has no real knowledge of the world he's in, or the one he's about to enter. The two older salts bond with the youth and undertake his "coming out" of sorts! They get him into a fight in a Boston train station men's room with a bunch of Marines! In a New York hotel, they all get blind drunk, and teach the teenaged Meadows the finer points of Navy life. When they discover the lad is a virgin, they take him to a brothel for his first encounter with a prostitute. And last, but not least, take him to a tattoo parlor for some proper Naval skin art! Then, finally, having spent all the time they can keeping him out of prison, the two CPOs must do as ordered, even though it's against their sensibilities, and complete their detail and deliver their prisoner to his fate.

      The original novel was written by Darryl Ponicsan in 1970, and the screen play is by Robert Towne, whose liberal use of profanity in the script kept the project on Columbia Pictures' shelves for nearly two years. Towne refused to tone it down, and Columbia finally relented and began production in early 1972, with Hal Ashby as director.

      Leonard Maltin gave it "***1/2", Time Magazine called it "A funny, occasionally touching and refreshing straightforward little movie" while Variety said: "The Last Detail is a salty, bawdy, hilarious and very touching story." The Hollywood Reporter called it "...An uncommonly fine movie distinguished by Jack Nicholson's wildly raucous and poetically complex portrait of an arrogant but sensitive sailor."

      The DVD has several "*@#!!*" features which I won't take the "*@#!!*" time to go into, herein!

      This is a very memorable adult theme movie with an "R" rating, so the kiddies'll have to wear ear muffs. (It's that or the closet, again!) Or you could just explain to them that "*@#!!*" is in the dictionary!

      Oh, by the way, the sordid rumors that are circulating about my relationship with Minnie Driver are totally and completely without foundation! We are barely friends!