Thelma and Louise

"Thelma & Louise" is a rare thrill - a gleefully offbeat road movie in which two women, instead of the usual footloose fellas, exult in the heady freedom of America's lonesome highways.

This unexpected delight, which travels at top speed from the doldrums to the Grand Canyon, is moreover blessed with two high-octane performances.

There are plenty of great one-liners in Callie Khouri's script, and cinematographer Adrian Biddle never fails to give viewers an eye full -- even when it's a ridiculous eye full.

The feminist justification that the script provides for the heroines' behavior doesn't make their actions any less preposterous. But you can recognize the crudeness of the movie's narrative devices and still have an awfully good time.

Thelma & Louise isn't only a movie, it's also a journey. In some dark night of your distant past, you might once have dreamed about taking it.

If the only way a woman can light up the screen these days is with a .38-caliber pistol, isn't that just another form of subordination?

The best thing that Ridley Scott ever directed that didn't take place in an impressively designed industrial future.

An enduring classic radically redefining women in movies - or at least some of them. And should finally put to rest the intended ending as not self-obliteration, but a burst of magical realism in flight 'out of this world and into the mass unconscious.'

If director Scott intended to picture a growing sense of female triumph, he failed miserably.

Thelma & Louise has its own ending. It may be as questionable as the rest of the picture, but at least you know it wasn't spliced on by some guy in marketing.

Female empowerment and gorgeous vistas from Ridley Scott,

Any movie that went as far out of its way to trash women as this female chauvinist sow of a film does to trash men would be universally, and justifiably, condemned.