magic trip 2011

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place

A freewheeling portrait of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters' fabled road trip across America. A freewheeling portrait of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters' fabled road trip across America. A freewheeling portrait of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters' fabled road trip across America.

• Alison Ellwood
• Alex Gibney
• Stanley Tucci
• Timothy Leary
• 8 User reviews
• 50 Critic reviews
• 59 Metascore
• 1 nomination

• (archive footage)

• Jane Burton

• (as The Warlocks)

• Gretchen Fetchen

• Self - Interviewer
• Stark Naked
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

More like this

Did you know

• Trivia Martin Scorsese 's film foundation helped fund the repair of the damaged Kesey footage by technicians from UCLA, who labored for over a year. Synching up the film to its separate snippets of audio track proved so daunting that director Alison Ellwood resorted to hiring a lip reader to determine what words people were mouthing.

Ken Kesey : What it meant, was that everybody had to consider a new way for things to be. Don't you know that we're all one? The deeper I got into it, the more I realized it was a different force working. The only big mistake we made, as a force, was thinking for a while that we were going to win. We developed vested interests in the victory to come. We begin to parcel off into little groups, whether it's feminism or politics. For money, religion, whatever it is; everybody is jumping up and down in front of it. Until nobody can see it clear anymore. There's something about what we're doing; is that we're meant to lose, every time. You make these forays, you write these books and you perform this music; but the big juggernaut of civilization continues, and you get kind of brushed to the side. But, I think all through history there's been these kind of divine losers that just take a deep breath and go ahead, knowing that society's not going to understand it. Not even caring, 'cause they're having a good time.

• Connections Featured in The Roth Show: The New York City Way (2014)
• Soundtracks Let's Go Trippin' Written by Dick Dale (as D. Dale) Published by Surf Beat Music Performed by Dick Dale & His Del-Tones (as Dick Dale and the Del-tones) Courtesy of Dick Dale Records

User reviews 8

• Nov 12, 2020
• How long is Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place? Powered by Alexa
• August 5, 2011 (United States)
• United States
• Official Facebook
• Official site
• Magnolia Pictures
• History Films
• Optimum Releasing
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• Aug 7, 2011

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 47 minutes
• Black and White
• Dolby Digital

Related news

Contribute to this page.

• See more gaps
• Learn more about contributing

More to explore

Recently viewed.

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

Movies / TV

No results found.

• What's the Tomatometer®?
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening this week
• Top box office
• Coming soon to theaters
• Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

• Fandango at Home
• Netflix streaming
• Prime Video
• Most popular streaming movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• Inside Out 2 Link to Inside Out 2
• The Bikeriders Link to The Bikeriders
• Fancy Dance Link to Fancy Dance

New TV Tonight

• The Bear: Season 3
• That '90s Show: Season 2
• My Lady Jane: Season 1
• Orphan Black: Echoes: Season 1
• Land of Women: Season 1
• Savage Beauty: Season 2
• WondLa: Season 1
• Zombies: The Re-Animated Series: Season 1

Most Popular TV on RT

• Star Wars: The Acolyte: Season 1
• The Boys: Season 4
• Presumed Innocent: Season 1
• House of the Dragon: Season 2
• Eric: Season 1
• Dark Matter: Season 1
• Joko Anwar's Nightmares and Daydreams: Season 1
• Evil: Season 4
• Fallout: Season 1
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV
• TV & Streaming News

Certified fresh pick

• House of the Dragon: Season 2 Link to House of the Dragon: Season 2
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

30 Most Popular Movies Right Now: What to Watch In Theaters and Streaming

All 73 Disney Animated Movies Ranked

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

Weekend Box Office: Inside Out 2 Becomes Highest-Grossing Film of the Year with Monster Second Weekend

RT Users Crown The Matrix The Best Movie of 1999!

• Trending on RT
• Box Office Top 10
• Best Shark Movies
• Pixar Movies Ranked

Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place

Where to watch.

Watch Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place with a subscription on Prime Video, rent on Fandango at Home, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Apple TV.

What to Know

Magic Trip is overall unenlightening, though there's an inherent novelty and joy in seeing the unearthed footage of Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Alex Gibney

Alison Ellwood

Stanley Tucci

Will Clarke

More Like This

Related movie news.

Currently available on 16 streaming services .

107min - English

3 Days Free

Subscription

$8.99 / month

Free with ads

Didn't find what you were looking for?

Let us notify you once it becomes available on more services

We checked for updates on 250 streaming services on June 24, 2024 at 8:20:47 AM. Something wrong? Let us know!

Magic Trip streaming: where to watch online?

Currently you are able to watch "Magic Trip" streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video with Ads or for free with ads on The Roku Channel, Tubi TV, Freevee, Amazon Prime Video with Ads. It is also possible to rent "Magic Trip" on Amazon Video, Vudu, FlixFling, Apple TV, Microsoft Store online and to download it on Apple TV, Amazon Video, Vudu, Microsoft Store, FlixFling, Google Play Movies, YouTube.

Where does Magic Trip rank today? The JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts are calculated by user activity within the last 24 hours. This includes clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist, and marking a title as 'seen'. This includes data from ~1.3 million movie & TV show fans per day.

Streaming charts last updated: 5:12:25 AM, 06/24/2024

Magic Trip is 3967 on the JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts today. The movie has moved up the charts by 1387 places since yesterday. In the United States, it is currently more popular than Moonage Daydream but less popular than Phantasm: Ravager.

A freewheeling portrait of Ken Kesey and the Merry Prankster’s fabled road trip across America in the legendary Magic Bus. In 1964, Ken Kesey, the famed author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” set off on a legendary, LSD-fuelled cross-country road trip to the New York World’s Fair. He was joined by “The Merry Band of Pranksters,” a renegade group of counterculture truth-seekers, including Neal Cassady, the American icon immortalized in Kerouac’s “On the Road,” and the driver and painter of the psychedelic Magic Bus.

Streaming Charts The JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts are calculated by user activity within the last 24 hours. This includes clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist, and marking a title as 'seen'. This includes data from ~1.3 million movie & TV show fans per day.

Production country

People who liked magic trip also liked.

Popular movies coming soon

Upcoming Music & Musical movies

Similar Movies you can watch for free

Advertisement

Supported by

Movie Review | 'Magic Trip'

Stoned Archive: Wild Ride Of the Merry Pranksters

• Share full article

By Stephen Holden

• Aug. 4, 2011

If you have ever agreed to baby-sit for a friend who needed a sympathetic watchdog while experimenting with psychedelics, you know how boring it can be to observe someone else in the throes of an acid trip. Unless, heaven forbid, the friend freaks out and has to be carted off to a psych ward, there is nothing interesting about it, not even the addled oh-wow remarks of the person under the influence. Meaningful communication is possible only if you’ve also ingested hallucinogens and are flying side by side. Then you might share the clammy fantasy of crawling around inside each other’s heads.

That unbridgeable distance between the stoned and the sober is the problem with Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood’s documentary “Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place.” This distillation of home movies shot by the author Ken Kesey and his friends, known as the Merry Pranksters, chronicles their acid-fueled cross-country bus trip in 1964 from California to New York to visit the World’s Fair. Thanks partly to Tom Wolfe’s raised-eyebrow account, “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” that bohemian lark has been retrospectively hailed as the flash point of the emerging hippie counterculture.

Compiled from more than 40 hours of 16-millimeter footage shot during the journey and stored in a barn near Eugene, Ore., “Magic Trip” is the cinematic equivalent of a yellowed scrapbook whose pictures are accompanied by sketchy captions created after the fact.

Because the Pranksters were too careless to synch the images with the sound, many of the movie’s voice-over reminiscences come from audiotapes recorded 10 years later, with the speakers haphazardly identified. Their accounts are supplemented with sparse narration by Stanley Tucci. None of the storytellers could be described as transfixing yarn spinners. Any philosophical afterthoughts are resoundingly banal.

With nicknames like Stark Naked, Intrepid Traveler, Mal Function, Gretchen Fetchin, Generally Famished and Zonker, the Pranksters suggest nothing so much as a group of attractive, preppy-looking partygoers, outfitted in red, white and blue, whose traveling bacchanal zigzags across the country, with each stop identified by a postcard.

In those more relaxed times, the Pranksters encountered only sporadic harassment. Their psychedelically painted vehicle, a 1939 International Harvester school bus that they christened Further, was an object more of curiosity than of hostility. In downtown Phoenix they mocked the presidential aspirations of Senator Barry Goldwater by driving the bus backward. Outside New Orleans they accidentally visited a beach for black people and fled in fear and embarrassment.

There is a minor uproar in Houston, where they visited the author Larry McMurtry in his staid, middle-class neighborhood, and the mentally unstable Stark Naked went missing. The Pranksters are also shown dancing around in a circle and playing instruments (badly) while imagining that they sound like John Coltrane, as well as splashing around in an Arizona pond while spontaneously inventing tie-dye (or so the movie suggests).

The World’s Fair proves to be a disappointment, as does a visit to the Millbrook, N.Y., estate where Timothy Leary reigned as the East Coast acid guru. This was not the euphoric, proto-hippie summit meeting they had anticipated, and Leary’s West Coast counterparts found themselves looked down on as frivolous.

The film begins with a biography of Kesey, a glamorous, blondish roughneck writer known for his novels “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Sometimes a Great Notion.” His college dreams of being an Olympic wrestler ended with a serious shoulder injury. The documentary includes a history of LSD and a re-creation of Kesey’s participation in a 1959 government study in which his moment-by-moment remarks after taking LSD were tape-recorded. (We hear his voice over a faked re-enactment.) The cheesy visual effects accompanying the sequence are meager compared with the full-blown psychedelia in Julie Taymor’s movie “Across the Universe.”

Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place

Opens on Friday in New York and San Francisco.

Written and directed by Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood, based on the words and recordings of Ken Kesey; voice of the interviewer, Stanley Tucci; edited by Ms. Ellwood; music by David Kahne; design and animated sequences by Imaginary Forces; produced by Will Clarke, Mr. Gibney and Alexandra Johnes; released by Magnolia Pictures. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes.

Besides Kesey, the most famous Prankster was Neal Cassady, the speed-fueled motormouth who was the model for Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” and the principal driver for the journey’s West-to-East-Coast lap. Then in his late 30s, he was already a visibly ravaged shadow of Kerouac’s heroically defiant rebel and well on his way to becoming the kind of babbling burnout you don’t want to sit next to on any bus trip, magical or not.

“Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has nudity and drug taking.

Explore More in TV and Movies

Not sure what to watch next we can help..

“Elvis” and “Dune” established Austin Butler as a chameleonic movie star. Now, with “The Bikeriders,” something closer to the real Butler is being revealed .

Erin Moriarty, the highest-billed actress in the superhero satire “The Boys,” discussed her role in an age of online bullying and token feminism .

How does democracy die? “The Boys” and other TV series imagine fascism coming to America , whether wrapped in the flag or in a superhero’s tights.

In his first season leading “Doctor Who,” Ncuti Gatwa has brought charisma, emotion and even more camp  to the long-running sci-fi show.

If you are overwhelmed by the endless options, don’t despair — we put together the best offerings   on Netflix , Max , Disney+ , Amazon Prime  and Hulu  to make choosing your next binge a little easier.

Sign up for our Watching newsletter  to get recommendations on the best films and TV shows to stream and watch, delivered to your inbox.

• GET TICKETS
• BUY BLU-RAY™
• WATCH AT HOME

SOCIAL ASSETS

• STREAM MORE GREAT FILMS

STORY In 1964, Ken Kesey, the famed author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” set off on a legendary cross-country road trip to the New York World’s Fair. He was joined by “The Merry Band of Pranksters,” including Neal Cassady, the American icon immortalized in Kerouac’s “On the Road.” Kesey and the Pranksters intended to make a documentary about their trip, but the film was never finished and the footage has remained virtually unseen. With MAGIC TRIP, Oscar®-winning director Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood were given unprecedented access to this raw footage to create a documentary of this extraordinary piece of American history.

STARRING Ken Kesey Neal Cassady The Merry Band of Pranksters The Grateful Dead

DIRECTED BY Alison Ellwood Alex Gibney

PRODUCED BY Will Clarke Alex Gibney Alexandra Johnes

• © 2013 Magnolia Pictures. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Do Not Sell My Personal Information

Cast & Crew

Jack Kerouac

Grateful Dead

Allen Ginsberg

Alex Gibney

• DOCUMENTARY
• Average 6.3

Information

© 2011 Magic Bus Productions LLC

Accessibility

Copyright © 2024 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.

Internet Service Terms Apple TV & Privacy Cookie Policy Support

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

'Magic Trip': High Times With The Merry Pranksters

Mark Jenkins

Road Warriors: Timothy Leary (left) and Neal Cassady, the inspiration for Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's On the Road , were two of the Merry Pranksters onboard the psychedelic "Further" bus in 1964. Magic Trip tries to immortalize their journey to a larger extent than the film is able to support. Allen Ginsberg/Corbis hide caption

• Directors: Alex Gibney, Alison Ellwood
• Genre: Documentary
• Running Time: 107 minutes

Rated R for drug content, language and some nudity

With: Stanley Tucci, Ken Kesey, Neal Cassady, The Merry Pranksters, The Grateful Dead

Watch Clips

Credit: Magnolia Pictures

'John Babbs'

'Once I Hit The Pond'

In the beginning was the word: Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test , published in 1968, evocatively reconstructed Ken Kesey and the Merry Band of Pranksters' cross-country bus trip of four years earlier. The book remains one of the seminal accounts of the decade's social, artistic and hallucinogenic experiments.

Now come the images: Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood have built a documentary, Magic Trip , from the 16mm color film the Pranksters shot along the way. The rarely seen (and carefully restored) footage looks good, although the lack of synchronized sound gives it a home-movie feel. The travelers did record sound, but it rarely matched the film. So the directors rely on audio interviews with the participants, recorded a decade after the excursion.

For those already somewhat familiar with the subject, the directors' distillation of these 40 hours of film will expand their knowledge — if not their consciousness. But other viewers may spend the whole movie wondering exactly when the merry magic is going to kick in.

The sparse narration, voiced by Stanley Tucci, oversells the significance of what's on-screen. The movie's prologue claims that the Pranksters' journey "changed everything." But surely the tie-dyed escapade was a symptom, not a cause, of the era's burgeoning youth culture.

As Wolfe detailed, Kesey moved through multiple worlds. He was an all-American, small-town boy who became an acclaimed novelist at 27 with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest . He was an early advocate of LSD and other psychedelics, and a patron of the Grateful Dead. And though he considered himself "too young to be a beat," he knew Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and most of the rest. Indeed, the Pranksters' bus driver was Neal Cassady, the Kerouac pal lightly fictionalized as Dean Moriarty in On the Road .

The Pranksters' own on-the-road venture was roundabout, wandering through Southern climes that within a few years would be considered inhospitable to hippies. Yet the local cops were bemused rather than threatened by the strangers, whose bus was decorated in psychedelic swirls but whose hair and dress wasn't that unusual. At the time, some of the travelers' favorite drugs weren't even illegal; LSD wouldn't be prohibited nationwide until 1968. (Cassady preferred speed, which fueled both his long hours at the wheel and his manic raps.)

Ken Kesey's bus, "Further," was an emblem of '60s counterculture. Painted by hand (and foot), the vehicle served as a temporary home for Kesey and his fellow hippies. Ted Streshinsky/Corbis hide caption

Ken Kesey's bus, "Further," was an emblem of '60s counterculture. Painted by hand (and foot), the vehicle served as a temporary home for Kesey and his fellow hippies.

Many of the Pranksters acquired nicknames that pretty much tell their whole story: Stark Naked, for example, got really stoned and stood nude on the moving bus' back platform, to the delight of truck drivers. Other members of the troupe are similarly one-dimensional. To judge from this account, Kesey wasn't first among equals: He was basically the whole show.

Gibney (whose best documentary is the Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side ) and Ellwood (his longtime editor) attempt to get inside the heads' heads with acid-simulating animations. They also interject clips from an LSD-peril episode of Dragnet and Hollywood's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , and illustrate the period's pop-culture shift with music that moves from silly ("Love Potion No. 9") to trippy ("Timothy's Leary's Dead").

It takes more such allusions, however, to conjure a fresh vision of the much-pondered 1960s. In the Pranksters' footage, Magic Trip does have something new. But the movie fails to make the cross-country jaunt function as a metaphor for the country's mid-century passage. Minus that, the Pranksters' everything-changing adventure looks a lot like just another road trip.

• Movies & TV
• Featured Categories
• Documentary

Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime Try Prime and start saving today with fast, free delivery

Amazon Prime includes:

Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.

• Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
• Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
• Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
• A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
• Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
• Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access

Important:  Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.

Buy new: #buybox .a-accordion .a-accordion-active .a-price[data-a-size=l].reinventPriceAccordionT2 .a-price-whole { font-size: 28px !important; } #buybox .a-accordion .a-accordion-active .a-price[data-a-size=l].reinventPriceAccordionT2 .a-price-fraction, #buybox .a-accordion .a-accordion-active .a-price[data-a-size=l].reinventPriceAccordionT2 .a-price-symbol { top: -0.75em; font-size: 13px; } $13.78 $ 13 . 78 FREE delivery Sunday, June 30 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35 Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com

Return this item for free.

Free returns are available for the shipping address you chose. You can return the item for any reason in new and unused condition: no shipping charges

• Go to your orders and start the return
• Select your preferred free shipping option
• Drop off and leave!

Return instructions

Save with used - good #buybox .a-accordion .a-accordion-active .a-price[data-a-size=l].reinventpriceaccordiont2 .a-price-whole { font-size: 28px important; } #buybox .a-accordion .a-accordion-active .a-price[data-a-size=l].reinventpriceaccordiont2 .a-price-fraction, #buybox .a-accordion .a-accordion-active .a-price[data-a-size=l].reinventpriceaccordiont2 .a-price-symbol { top: -0.75em; font-size: 13px; } $11.10 $ 11 . 10 free delivery tuesday, july 2 on orders shipped by amazon over $35 ships from: amazon sold by: zoommx6, image unavailable.

• Sorry, this item is not available in
• Image not available
• To view this video download Flash Player

Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search For A Kool Place

• Prime Video $2.99

Purchase options and add-ons

Frequently bought together.

Customers who bought this item also bought

From the manufacturer

A leading independent film studio for 20 years, Magnolia Pictures is the theatrical and home entertainment distribution arm of the Wagner/Cuban Companies, boasting a library of over 500 titles.Recent releases include Sierra Pettengill’s kaleidoscopic all-archival documentary RIOTSVILLE, USA; SXSW Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award-winning comedy I LOVE MY DAD, starring Patton Oswalt; Concordia Studio and Wavelength’s sweeping American West documentary BITTERBRUSH; Martin Scorsese executive-produced documentary DREAMING WALLS: INSIDE THE CHELSEA HOTEL; stranger-than-fiction Sundance documentary MY OLD SCHOOL, starring Alan Cumming.

There There

Acclaimed filmmaker Andrew Bujalski (Support the Girls, Computer Chess) explores the precarious nature of human connection in There There, a round robin of emotional two-character vignettes in which seven people reach out and bond momentarily, setting the scene for the next encounter.

Next Exit follows a research scientist (Karen Gillan, AVENGERS) who makes national news proving she can track people into the afterlife - Rose (Katie Parker, THE MIDNIGHT CLUB) sees a way out and Teddy (Rahul Kohli, MIDNIGHT MASS) sees his chance to finally make it.

I LOVE MY DAD

Inspired by writer, director, and star James Morosini’s true life experience, I LOVE MY DAD follows Chuck (Patton Oswalt), a hopelessly estranged father who desperately wants to reconnect with his troubled son, Franklin (Morosini). Blocked on social media and concerned for his son’s life, Chuck impersonates a waitress online and starts checking in with Franklin.

With the summer sun beating down on her rural Spanish town, Sara hides away in her parent’s butcher shop. A teenager whose excess weight makes her the target of incessant bullying, she flees a clique of capricious girls who torment her at the town pool, only to stumble upon them being brutally kidnapped by a stranger, who drives off with them in his van.

Product Description

In 1964, Ken Kesey, the famed author of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," set off on a legendary, LSD-fuelled cross-country road trip to the New York World's Fair. He was joined by "The Merry Band of Pranksters," including Neal Cassady, the American icon immortalized in Kerouac's "On the Road." Kesey and the Pranksters intended to make a documentary about their trip, but the film was never finished and the footage has remained virtually unseen. With Magic Trip, Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood were given unprecedented access to this raw footage to create a documentary of this extraordinary piece of American history.

Product details

• MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ R (Restricted)
• Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 0.7 x 7.5 x 5.4 inches; 2.72 ounces
• Item model number ‏ : ‎ 22853942
• Director ‏ : ‎ Alison Ellwood, Alex Gibney
• Media Format ‏ : ‎ NTSC, Widescreen, Multiple Formats, Closed-captioned, Dolby, Subtitled, Color
• Run time ‏ : ‎ 1 hour and 47 minutes
• Release date ‏ : ‎ November 1, 2011
• Actors ‏ : ‎ Ken Kesey, Ken Babbs, Timothy Leary, The Grateful Dead, Neal Cassady
• Subtitles: ‏ : ‎ Spanish
• Producers ‏ : ‎ Will Clarke, Alexandra Johnes, Alex Gibney
• Studio ‏ : ‎ Magnolia Home Ent
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B005HI4LLO
• Country of Origin ‏ : ‎ USA
• Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1
• #1,226 in Documentary (Movies & TV)
• #1,571 in Special Interests (Movies & TV)

Customer reviews

Our goal is to make sure every review is trustworthy and useful. That's why we use both technology and human investigators to block fake reviews before customers ever see them.  Learn more

We block Amazon accounts that violate our community guidelines. We also block sellers who buy reviews and take legal actions against parties who provide these reviews.  Learn how to report

Reviews with images

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Become an Amazon Hub Partner
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

Letterboxd — Your life in film

Forgotten username or password ?

• Start a new list…
• Add all films to a list…
• Add all films to watchlist

Add to your films…

Press Tab to complete, Enter to create

A moderator has locked this field.

Add to lists

Where to watch

Directed by Alex Gibney , Alison Ellwood

A drug-fuelled road trip in the 60s

A freewheeling portrait of Ken Kesey and the Merry Prankster’s fabled road trip across America in the legendary Magic Bus. In 1964, Ken Kesey, the famed author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” set off on a legendary, LSD-fuelled cross-country road trip to the New York World’s Fair. He was joined by “The Merry Band of Pranksters,” a renegade group of counterculture truth-seekers, including Neal Cassady, the American icon immortalized in Kerouac’s “On the Road,” and the driver and painter of the psychedelic Magic Bus.

Ken Kesey Jerry Garcia Neal Cassady Phil Lesh Bob Weir

Directors Directors

Alex Gibney Alison Ellwood

Producers Producers

Will Clarke Alex Gibney Alexandra Johnes

Writers Writers

Editor editor.

Alison Ellwood

Executive Producers Exec. Producers

Gareth Wiley David McKillop Molly Thompson Robert Belau David Kowitz

Composer Composer

David Kahne

A&E IndieFilms Phoenix Wiley

Alternative Title

Viagem Mágica

Music Documentary

Releases by Date

05 aug 2011, releases by country.

• Theatrical R

107 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Mos Co ★½

I fell asleep watching this last night and just finished it off tonight. Its so much more interesting reading about these dudes rather than watching them.

Review by ghostdinosaur ★★★½ 2

i love lsd and so i love this movie

Review by Allison M. 🌱 ★★★½

“Those first few pages of Cuckoo's Nest were written on peyote.”

I feel that while there wasn't a whole lot of new information about Ken Kesey, it was an interesting story, told through beautiful visuals. The music elevated the documentary to a whole new level. It was basically fun and historical. It's always safe to check out anything by director Alex Gibney. The film is also co-directed by Alison Ellwood.

“...There was more than we had been led to believe.”

Vegan alert: -Testing on cats: cats were afraid of mice if they had LSD

Vegan points: -Positive song about whales

Review by kayla ★★★★

I wanna do something like this

Review by kmeaston ★★½

I appreciate the abundance of rare and unseen footage, but watching this is like being the only sober person at the party.

Review by wellwellwell ★★★ 1

Probably interesting only if you've read Woolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Trip. I have, and it was pretty amazing to see Kesey and his merry pranksters as they really were.

Review by Evgeny Smirnov ★★★

Hopefully one day a genius editor will make a new psychedelic "Diaries, Notes, and Sketches" out of Pranksters' 40+ hours of footage: raw parts of their movie that made it to Magic Trip look very promising. The current creative team, however, decided to patch it all together with a bunch of outisde narrative elements that rarely work and sometimes annoy much more than they should. Some of the psychedelic animations are nice, but most of the present day interviews and added documentary narratives fail to do justice to the trip: they are sometimes vulgar, sometimes boring and only rarely insightful, Jane Burton gets a ton of time for some reason, even though it's obvious that she is bitter about the…

Review by BT369 ½

Best part was when the hippies finally arrive in new york and invite Jack Kerouac, their idol, to a party and they try really hard to impress him but he just sits there quietly sipping his beer visibly cringing at their antics

Review by Iris

That bus must smell crazy

Review by sethbgvt ★★★

If you want a visual sense of what it was like to be involved with Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters as they went across country in the Furthur bus in 1964, this documentary has it. A lot of it. 

I confess I’m of that boomer generation and was excited to see this newly reconstructed footage that had been put away. I’m also a big big Dead fan. Saw them twice when Jerry was still alive and four times post Jerry. And at first, I felt happy and almost high,  reliving the “good” times. But as the trip and film wore on, the nostalgia wore off and I got bored almost. Don’t get me wrong. If you are just getting your feet…

Review by TaylorCohan

even with help from the cia, this propaganda film can't make ken keesey not seem like a sex pervert

Review by MoviePhreak ★★★

This is the film version of Tom Wolfe’s masterful and freewheeling book, “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” - a documentary using mostly original film footage that Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters captured on their journey from Oregon to the New York World’s Fair of 1964, and then back again. It’s a chronicle of a different time, in a different America. It all feels rather quaint and juvenile, actually, and not exactly a grand experiment in consciousness expansion and an existence fueled on good drugs and the music of the Dead.

Biggest takeway: Neal Cassady was a seriously freaky dude. What did Kerouac and Ginsberg ever see in him?

Select your preferred backdrop

Select your preferred poster.

🙌 Awesome, you're subscribed!

Thanks for subscribing! Look out for your first newsletter in your inbox soon!

Get us in your inbox

Sign up to our newsletter for the latest and greatest from your city and beyond

By entering your email address you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and consent to receive emails from Time Out about news, events, offers and partner promotions.

Awesome, you're subscribed!

The best things in life are free.

Sign up for our email to enjoy your city without spending a thing (as well as some options when you’re feeling flush).

Déjà vu! We already have this email. Try another?

Love the mag?

Our newsletter hand-delivers the best bits to your inbox. Sign up to unlock our digital magazines and also receive the latest news, events, offers and partner promotions.

• Things to Do
• Food & Drink
• Arts & Culture
• Time Out Market
• Coca-Cola Foodmarks
• Los Angeles

• Recommended

Time Out says

Release details.

• Release date: Friday 18 November 2011
• Duration: 107 mins

Cast and crew

• Director: Alison Ellwood, Alex Gibney

Been there, done that? Think again, my friend.

Discover Time Out original video

• Press office
• Investor relations
• Work for Time Out
• Editorial guidelines
• Privacy notice
• Do not sell my information
• Cookie policy
• Accessibility statement
• Terms of use
• Modern slavery statement
• Manage cookies
• Advertising

Time Out Worldwide

• All Time Out Locations
• North America
• South America
• South Pacific