Bob Gale
Interstate 60

""Consider this theory: given an infinite universe and infinite time, everything will happen. This means that all events are inevitable, even those considered impossible, and this is a valid explanation for my story..."

Thus begins the paranormal adventure of Neil Oliver (James Marsden), the young son of a great lawyer who, however, cares little about his son's true aspirations and especially his passion for art. On his twenty-third birthday, he meets a strange character, a certain O. W. Grant (Gary Oldman), who guarantees him he can fulfill one wish: usually, those who met the ambiguous figure asked for material things which would lead to their ruin, but Neil only asks for answers to his questions: who is the girl he keeps dreaming about and painting even though he has never seen her? How should he deal with his father, who tries every way to make him become like him? An accident leads him to meet Ray (Christopher Lloyd), another ambiguous character who reveals to him that the world may not be as we are accustomed to thinking, that things deemed impossible can happen, because we only know of the world what we want to see (a bit like philosopher Poincaré asserted), but it is enough to pay more attention to daily events to discover new things. An extraordinary game of coincidences pushes Neil to agree to deliver a mysterious package to the unknown city of Danver, for which he will have to travel the nonexistent Route 60.

It is the start of a surreal on the road adventure where Neil, occasionally assisted by O.W. Grant, who reveals himself to be even more bizarre than one might have thought, and by a billiard ball that for some obscure reason can answer his questions. And on the road, the young man will have even stranger encounters: a man capable of eating enormous quantities of food, like a bottomless pit, a nymphomaniac hitchhiker, a city of drug addicts commanded by a cunning and wicked police commander (Kurt Russell), a former advertiser (Chris Cooper) with violent tendencies who threatens anyone who dares to lie with dynamite, a museum of stolen masterpieces, a city inhabited solely by lawyers and animated by legal squabbles of all kinds, in a picaresque and entertaining crescendo, peppered with a surreal atmosphere that accompanies Neil throughout his journey on Route 60, which is actually a journey within his own mind to find the answers to the questions that torment him.

Neil will succeed in orienting himself in the sea of coincidences he recognizes in every occurrence, to believe in his own destiny and especially in himself, becoming increasingly confident with a road that recalls a bit the world of "Gulliver's Travels" by Jonathan Swift, which also shares a certain inclination for social satire, and "A True Story" by Lucian of Samosata for the comedic nature of some scenes.

A surreal comedy from 2002 by Bob Gale (also the creator of "Back to the Future"), which combines the simplicity of plot assimilation with deeper meanings, manages to catapult the viewer into a world completely out of any schema and make them reflect carefully on the games of chance and the questions we all ask ourselves. In short, one of the best "light" films I have ever seen.