‘Along For The Ride’ Needlessly Adorns Dennis Hopper’s Legacy With Saintliness [Review]

Dennis Hopper was a legend. His tumultuous career — replete with soaring highs and harrowing lows — was matched only by his turbulent and unruly personal life. The director behind the prototype for American independent cinema, the classic “Easy Rider,” Hopper’s career began alongside that of James Dean, whom he shared the screen with twice, before bottoming out with his ambitious disaster “The Last Movie” when he was blackballed by the industry for his indignance and difficult attitude. His story for the next two decades was basically cyclical: the dizzying highs of cinematic masterpieces (“Apocalypse Now,” “Blue Velvet”) and plenty more ghastly misfires and personal woes. His life, as he lived it with passion and abandon, was an imposing story just waiting for the right documentary to piece it together. “Along For The Ride,” from director Nick Ebeling, is not that doc, for better or worse.

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