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Verdict: An impressionistic look at the Beats, best appreciated by those already in the know.

Details: A documentary by Chuck Workman. Unrated. 1 hour, 29 minutes.

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Review: If you're down with the Beat poets, you'll get a kick from this documentary's mixture of old photographs, home movies and dramatic readings by celebrities Johnny Depp, Dennis Hopper and John Turturro. Even if you have only a marginal knowledge of the artists involved, the first half-hour of "The Source" is a flavorful glance back at the important 1944 meeting of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs in New York.

Chuck Workman's film documents how they changed not only the way America wrote, but the way we lived, with their works "On the Road," "Howl" and "Naked Lunch" injecting psychedelic color into the black-and-white 1950s world of "Ozzie and Harriet."

But as the film bebops from film clip to dramatic reading to off-the-cuff quote from other counterculture cronies (Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey and the peevish Gregory Corso), its jazzy, improvisatory approach becomes wearying. Sure, Workman may have wanted to capture the restless energy of writers who were pushing boundaries. But after a point, this method of montage seems to be designed to distract us from how little useful information the movie conveys about who the Beats really were.

It's not enough to show Neal Cassady dancing around shirtless and have an old crony say, "He himself was the art." What does that mean, exactly? The film explains that Cassady was the guiding force of the other writers, but he's elusive, just a guy with a big skull and a goofy smile.

"The Source" is not only stingy with providing context and facts, it stretches itself too thin, trying to cover 40 years in less than 90 minutes. It doesn't help that the celebrity readings bite into that running time and wear out their welcome quickly.

Early on, the movie amusingly shows that no one — even the writers themselves — can pin down the exact meaning of the name "Beat." Less amusingly, "The Source" never tries to pin down what it's going after. It's just a hep hodgepodge.

— Steve Murray, Cox News Service

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