The Same River Twice

Director: Robb Moss
Year Released: 2003
Rating: 2.0

Documentary filmmaker (and Harvard professor) Robb Moss 'revisits' a few select friends twenty years after they went on a month-long river rafting trip to see how their lives have changed (if at all). Out of the five or so friends Moss chose to represent, most of them haven't given up their old hippie mindset, living off the earth or writing books about the woods, and the one that become more or less domesticated - the gentleman with testicular cancer - is included for the inherent drama in his life (I'm supposing that the other people that went on the trip didn't have such a problem or were less tragic figures, so they weren't included). The footage used of the mini-commune suggests utopia, but it's included for essentially symbolic purposes only, and the river itself is intended to be a metaphor for life (of course!). With a running time less than 80 minutes, it feels slight - it might have also helped had the 'river dogs' of the late seventies been fleshed out further instead of portrayed as Matisse-like prancing bodies.