This comedy-drama is nice, and I wanted to like it more. It’s a road movie, and I kind of like road movies. Not only that, but it’s writer-director, Kyle Smith, took the trouble to actually drive to all the locations his lead characters do. His lead characters, Dillon and Kerry, are played by his friends Dillon Porter (who resembles Seann William Scott) and Kerry Bishé, whose experiences on a long car trip inspired the script. So it has a very realistic feel to it. The fictional Dillon and Kerry are twenty-something friends making a cross-country move from Richmond, Virginia, to Los Angeles, in and old jalopy without a radio. Perhaps inspired by William Least Heat-Moon, whose bestseller Blue Highways told the story of a trip through small-town America, they’re staying off the interstates. (Talky Dillon seems like he might have read it; Kerry definitely hasn’t.) The reason for the move is briefly mentioned, but it’s the journey, not the destination, that matters.
So that’s the plot. I think one thing a movie ought to do is accurately portray a reality, even if that reality is a fantasy. But also, a movie ought to make that reality interesting. This movie so accurately simulates what these particular characters might experience that it may leave you with the similar feeling of wanting to get to wherever you’re going. Or at least take the faster interstate. It’s not all bad. There are some funny scenes as they make brief pilgrimages to places where different films are set, meanwhile quizzing each other as to which movie is being paid homage to. But they mostly find no trace of the former sets, so these scenes too are often set on ordinary stretches of highway. (Texas: long, flat, dull.) Dramatically, there is one very well-done scene, toward the end of the film where we discover more about the relationship of these two characters that in the rest of the movie put together.
IMDb link
viewed 9/19/13 7:45 pm at Ritz East [Philadelphia Film Festival] and posted 9/19/13
No comments:
Post a Comment