Tonight I’m watching the IFC flick, “Wanderlust”. It documents cinema’s romance with the open road. A nice mix of actors, directors, authors and cinematographers recounting tales of their personal journeys interspersed with clips from iconic films. I love being out on the road, so I really enjoyed it.
If I had to pick ONE favorite road movie I’d be stuck. There are too many of them.
Just to start the list though, how about *“It Happened One Night” *?
The original “Star Wars”. (A road movie doesn’t have to have asphalt.)
“Wild At Heart” is one of my favorites. And of course all the Hope/Crosby ones…TRM
That’s an interesting point. If the road doesn’t have to be asphalt, what IS the definition of a road movie? A destination? A quest? A journey through the unknown?
For purposes of this thread, why not “all of the above”?
Another favorite of mine: “Starman”
Wizard of Oz?
Natural Born Killers
WAAAAY too many to mention or catalog; one of the most popular formulas in the history of storytelling.
Randomly chosen sampling of personal faves:
Two-Lane Blacktop
The Live by Night
The Searchers
The Big Sky
Peewee’s Big Adventure
Plague Dogs
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Little Miss Sunshine
On the classical side of things, you should check the Road to Morocco. (1942) one of the best Road ( 
) movies Bing Crosby and Bob Hope made together. With Dorothy Lamour and a young Anthony Quinn.
A movie that one should check to get many of the references of the animated show Family Guy.
**Midnight Run **-- DeNiro and Grodin. Comedy, action, and a bit of human drama. Good flick.
I heartily disagree–to conflate “road movie” with any old journey renders the unique distinction of the former completely meaningless. I think a road movie has to be in touch with the landscape, which usually plays an integral part of the voyage. There is no landscape to traverse in Star Wars, only landscape to overcome (you can count the amount of time Luke spends in his landspeeder in a manner of seconds); the closest thing resembling a road movie dynamic is when the droids are lost in the wasteland. And Road Movies are fundamentally about the journey, not the destination (SW is too fast-paced, always thinking of the future, not where they are at the moment ;)).
I think selling a “road movie” sans automobile is difficult, too–car culture, IMHO, is also an essential part of a “road movie”, because a road movie usually suggests escape from civilization and a return to the vastly-diminishing countryside (which is why The Searchers is an epic journey, but not a road movie, since bastions of traditional homestead civilization remain the exception, not the norm; heck, there aren’t even any roads!).
The Road Movies (Hope/Crosby) are only called that because of the titles; if you count them as Road Movies, then you have to also count every Kong, Robin Hood, and Mowgli film. Why even call something a Road Movie if you dilute its generally understood connotation to the point where anything can be one? I think a better case is made for Oz because of the variety of incidents that happen on the way and the motley crew of travellers that latch onto Dorothy as things progress (though I’m not even really completely sold on that premise, either).
Two-Lane Blacktop is a perfect example, but Road Movies are certainly not limited to American environs. Wim Wenders’ Kings of the Road is magnificent in its attention to local color and detail and meditative in its exploration of both character and community.
How about Fellowship of the Ring, then? Plenty of road (though it is trod, not driven), plenty of landscape, and its about the journey, although the destination becomes important in later films.
It’s an SDMB tradition that any movie thread has to include Star Wars, The Matrix, or Lord of the Rings within the first ten posts. Even if it’s “What’s the best animated romantic comedy in cinema history?”
I would offer Sullivan’s Travels as an example that’s not sans automobile but not auto-centric either, there may be other hobo or train-centered examples but none come directly to mind (The General perhaps? or The Electric Horseman as a non-vehicular example?).
I agree that Star Wars is right out and The Wizard of Oz and The Lord of the Rings, while certainly focused on roads are traditional epic journeys. The “road movie” is partly a subspecies of the epic journey but I think Thelma and Louise and Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry are something else making the taxonomy more difficult.
I love that movie.
How about Rain Man?
And The Trip to Bountiful is quite good, too.
Is a motorized conveyance is required for a road movie? Hmmm, that’s a tough one…I could go either way with that. Perhaps you could have sub-genres like “trail movies” or “river movies”?
Another one of my favorites is “About Schmidt”. In the DVD extras, there’s a deleted scene where Jack riffs on his famous bit from “Five Easy Pieces”.