Freaktana
A Major Disappointment
Kien Navarro
Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
Logan
By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
FilmCriticLalitRao
The death in a family is viewed as an irreparable loss which affects everybody.In such a case,it is a wrong decision for a couple to fight with each other and separate.It would be better if the couple stays together to support each other in times of crisis.It is on these lines that American director Lawrence Kasdan's film "The Accidental Tourist" informs viewers about how wrong choices are corrected by a solitary man when he meets a talkative woman who would like to move ahead in life with him and her son.Although the film is not based on an original screenplay nevertheless it is able to interest viewers as its tone is light.There are various little episodes in these two people's lives which make for an interesting viewing experience.Apart from the leading man who writes travel guides,there are also other people seeking love.It is this story development which gives "The Accidental Tourist" a different edge as it has been promoted as a sad film.
robert-temple-1
I decided to watch this film again after many years, and it impressed me more now than it did when it came out. It is a very sensitive film based upon a novel published in 1985 (of the same title) by the well-known American novelist Anne Tyler (born 1941), a denizen of Baltimore. The characters of this novel are also from Baltimore, which some regard as the Centre of the Earth, by which I refer primarily to those innocents who have not seen THE WIRE (2002, see my review). William Hurt gives one of his brilliant performances (which seem to come so naturally to him) as Macon Leary, an up-tight and hopelessly stuffy author of travel guides for Americans who do not like to leave America and wish to travel in their bubble, thus protecting themselves from all contaminating influences such as foreigners or even people from another city such as Philadelphia. But to give an idea of how hopeless an isolationist Leary is, we see him eating disgusting hamburgers at a Burger King in Paris, which he will in turn recommend to his readers. Leary will guide timorous Americans to Burger Kings and other such horrible places wherever they are in the world, so that they need never eat anything strange. In a voice-over in this film, he says of French restaurants and their menus of the day: 'Avoid Prix Fixe. It forces you to eat all those courses you don't want.' One presumes that Tyler is being gently satirical in inventing this character (let us hope he never really existed and is a caricature). Leary's series of books are called 'The Accidental Tourist', hence the title of the film. And as for Leary himself, he is an accidental tourist of Life. Meanwhile, Leary's accidentally toured life has been devastated by the death of his only son, and he has been savaged by grief. His wife, played by Kathleen Turner, leaves him at the beginning of the story to live in a separate flat and go her own way, as she says he has not yet come to terms with his grief and she can no longer live with him. Thus, he lives alone in his house with the most charming actor in the film, a dog called Bud, who plays the dog in the film. I would greatly like to have Bud come and live with me! However, as the film was made 26 years ago, perhaps he is no longer about. I like all dog films, and this to a larger extent than one might imagine is a dog film. It is Bud's lack of good behaviour which brings Leary into contact with the charmingly eccentric character Muriel (whom Leary later describes as 'that odd girl'), who is a dog trainer, and who becomes his romantic muse and saviour. This character is played by the wonderfully odd actress Geena Davis, one of my favourites. The film she made just before this one, in the same year, was EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY (1988, see my review), which I think of as one of the funniest films ever made, and Davis's central performance in it made it work. Never having met Davis, I can only presume that in order to play these wacky and offbeat characters to such perfection, she must be pretty odd herself. However, she rid herself of these anomalies when she played the President of the United States in the excellent TV series COMMANDER IN CHIEF (2005), in which her performance was, well, 'commanding', and it won her a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a TV drama. It is a great pity that the rather weird and wonderful Geena Davis has not made many more films than she has, but she won a well deserved Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST, which shows that she has been appreciated by her peers (as do her countless other awards). She also resembles the goddess Diana (aka Artemis) in that she is an archery champion, and having been married four times, she clearly takes good aim at the heart. If she were ever to 'come up to see me sometime', I could show her my long bow which my grandfather lovingly carved out of lemonwood from South America because he said it had the best qualities (his idea being that he would be making the Stradivarius of long bows). No mere yew for him! Long bows are so much more romantic than etchings. Another excellent actress who appears in this film is Amy Wright, who does a brilliant job of portraying Leary's eccentric sister Rose. The film is essentially a study of people who 'don't fit'. Sometimes they don't fit in a good way and sometimes they don't fit in a bad way. So Tyler seems to be excavating the American psyche to find divergences from the norm, which is an important thing to do in a country where 'normality' ranks second only the 'the dollar' theologically speaking. This film was directed by the highly talented Lawrence Kasdan, who knows a good nuance when he sees one. And in this film we see plenty of them.
richard-1787
This movie has a lot going for it. The acting is the best part: the three main characters - perhaps I should say the two main characters, the roles played by William Hurt and Kathleen Turner - are very three-dimensional. Those actors given their characters many dimensions, and it makes them interesting and sometimes surprising. Gena Davis also does a fine job with her role, but her character does tend to be a caricature at times.That is the problems with most of the rest of the characters: they are written as two-dimensional, and they too often come off as oddball caricatures. I'm sure those actors could have done better with a better script concerning them, but they didn't have the chance.Some of the moments are really remarkable, especially the scenes between Turner and Hurt. And then, some of the scenes are just wrong. The worst, for me, was the last 60 seconds of the movie, where Hurt's character meets Davis' character and the music swells: it screams "make the women in the audience happy" and seems like it was pasted on.Equally problematic is what leads to that: the second-last scene, between Turner and Hurt, where Hurt finally explains what he sees in Davis' character. It's very interesting and intelligent dialogue - her quirky character has allowed him to try to be someone different, to get out of his old, boring rut - but the movie never really showed us that. That, for me, was a real problem.A lot of this movie is very well done, and I recommend it. But a fair amount of it is facile caricature, and that may boor some viewers.
secondtake
Accidental Tourist (1988)So, for starters, Geena Davis won a best supporting actress for this role. She is a surprising presence, but she is only a shadow, to me, of William Hurt's deceptively taut and perceptive role. Weakest of the three main actors is Kathleen Turner, who is brought far down from the energy she had, say, in "Peggy Sue Got Married" just two years earlier. This might be because Davis is lifted so high.The story is by Anne Tyler, who won awards and praise for her novel, as literature, before the movie. The hook implied by the title is just the starting point. Even though "Accidental Tourist" deals with totally, very, beautifully serious things, there is a kind of gleam to it all, a knowing despondency, as if the writer knew what tricks to use to make us feel deep things. And it's sort of okay, even at the end, which is improbable the way it is played out, but is emotionally really satisfying.I liked the movie a lot, for sure. It's about feelings and real people, without crime and violence, and I like all that. But maybe the Oscar might have gone to William Hurt, who pulls off a subtle role with absolutism. He nails the detached, patient, observant, fearful person that his character is. Geena Davis with all her idiosyncratic energy, and later with her more mainstream domesticity (the two are never resolved), is a perfect spark for his smolder. And it pulls together, most of the time, but there are oddities that are meant to be quaint and fun that throw it off course. The agent is awkward, the Leary family is like a comic idea that just makes the depth of the principles odd for their seriousness. And the sudden attempt at reconciliation seems improbable, at least with the knee-jerk way it comes off. The music is oddly repetitive and annoying if you notice it, too.One element, of course, that infects how you look at all this, is the role of the two children, the two sons. They make everything the adults do significant, even if still sometimes questionable. But hey, it's actually a soap opera, which I love, with emotions flying this way and that, and echoes of our own lives everywhere. So dive in and give it all a go. Even it feels slow at times, give it a moment. Hurt, who isn't always on target in other films, is really perfectly cast here, and he makes it work.
