On The Road With Alan Arkin: ‘Rafferty And The Gold Dust Twins’ Reviewed

Warner Archive provided me with a free copy of the Blu-Ray I reviewed in this article. The opinions I share are my own.

Most people avoid going to the DMV unless they have to. Rafferty (Alan Arkin) works there. After 20 years serving in the Marines (during which he didn’t see combat), Rafferty’s now a driver’s license examiner in California whose own car is such a lemon that he has to climb in through the back seat because his driver’s side door won’t open. When McKinley (Sally Kellerman) and Frisbee (Mackenzie Phillips) find him he’s drinking bourbon in the park during his lunch hour, yet that doesn’t detour them from asking for a ride – well, not ask. Frisbee basically tells him they need a ride and that’s the end of the conversation, but then Frisbee pulls a gun on him and it’s revealed they’re not going anywhere local. They want to go to New Orleans and Rafferty’s the lucky driver they’ve chosen to kidnap.

Dick Richards’ Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins was always going to be a shaggy dog, odd duck of a movie. The title itself is strange and seems to be a reference to the fact that they interrupt their road trip to make a stop in Vegas. McKinley and Frisbee aren’t related. They just met on the road and decided to team up. McKinley’s a freewheeling, would-be singing hippie. Frisbee’s an angry teen (as The One Day at A Time star was wont to play). Their characters are consistent and when the film goes into downbeat 70’s mode (if you’ve seen a lot of ’70s movies then you know that decade wasn’t afraid to have unhappy or ambiguous endings) that’s when they shine the most.

The performance that’s a little confusing is Arkin’s as Rafferty. There’s a character arc to be told here, with Rafferty coming around to the idea of having his life interrupted and growing to enjoy these women’s company but he becomes comfortable with the arrangement awfully fast, where it sometimes comes across as Arkin enjoying the shoot more than the character being at a point where he’d already be smiling.

There are a lot of plot points that are confusing in John Kaye’s screenplay. Like, are viewers just supposed to go, “it’s the ’70s — people got away with stuff in the ’70s,” because Frisbee is supposed to be 15 yet somehow she’s allowed in a casino and to play one of the machines without any pushback. There’s also a lack of morality to their grifting that I feel is supposed to come across as charming but their targets are ordinary people and they seem to have no remorse about the chaos they cause, like when Rafferty’s breaks get busted so they decide to steal the car part, but that of course leaves another car without working breaks. That’s not OK or funny, yet the film quickly moves on. Where the money they steal goes is never really clear — they just seem to be immediately out again. Their behavior reads as more spoiled than survival mode.

American Graffiti’s Charles Martin Smith makes a small but memorable appearance as a very believable “wronged” white man who can’t see the error in his own actions, while the great Harry Dean Stanton is introduced as an interesting counterpart to Rafferty – a marine who did see combat — but then the part devolves into your average bar creep. The driver’s test scenes reminded me a little of Mike Leigh‘s Happy-Go-Lucky and an alternate movie could’ve been made where Rafferty was never kidnapped but just had to go on failing horrible drivers.

The soundtrack is extremely eclectic and includes everything from showtunes to Dolly Parton’s “Jolene”. Warner Archive’s Blu-ray only includes a theatrical trailer which interestingly ends on a scene of them singing that must have been an outtake.

Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins is available on Blu-ray now from Warner Archive and to purchase from Movie Zyng. It wants to be endearing but, in this reviewer’s opinion, the film mostly misses the mark.