← Back to Reviews
in
The Accidental Tourist (1988) Kasdan
One Grey suit will suffice
Drama with funny bits. A travel guide writer tries to get on with his life after a personal tragedy.
Nice things? The Leary clan is still delightfully eccentric and spatially challenged; Each sibling heads downtown on some routine errand and ends up getting lost and driving around in circles for hours. The family pooch seems to have picked up on Macon's slow withdraw into himself and begins to act out with increasingly vicious behaviors. The scene where Macon tries to slip a letter under her door explaining why he can't have dinner with her. When Muriel pulls him into an embrace, her face becomes luminous with light, her eyes close, as if in a dream, then flick open when he mentions his wife---even though he doesn't know he's still in love with his wife, it registers with her.
In complete opposition to Hurt's understated freeze-out; Geena Davis deservedly snapped up the supporting actress Oscar that year for her Muriel Pritchett supporting role that complemented him perfectly.
Ever so often there's a motivational cut to a flashback needlessly explaining some plot point. It's kind of weird how everything now seems over-explained. It's almost as if part of the script was mistakenly formatted with an Easy-eye font. Example: Macon writes books for people who don't like to travel, the whole idea is to get through the trip without being bothered once. Which of course, becomes the big metaphor for his life: get through it without a single shock or stumble. Paradoxically, in contrast with everything else in the film, the Director Lawrence Kasdan has wisely chosen not to overemphasize William Hurt's wonderfully understated performance.
Despite an overall depreciation for this film---it seems a tad overstated now; Hurt's performance has really appreciated. There's too much pain in love. He'd rather sail through the rest of his life, alone and safe. He reminded me a lot of the recent protagonist in Tom Ford's "A single Man" Both George and Macon are one dark night away from swallowing an ice bucket full of sleeping pills, but both men stubbornly carry on. On this, maybe the fifth or sixth time I've seen this, the editing of the movie has seriously soured my enjoyment of it. O how the mighty have fallen.
The Accidental tourist ~ 7/10
http://www.impawards.com/1988/accide...urist_xlg.html
One Grey suit will suffice
Drama with funny bits. A travel guide writer tries to get on with his life after a personal tragedy.
Nice things? The Leary clan is still delightfully eccentric and spatially challenged; Each sibling heads downtown on some routine errand and ends up getting lost and driving around in circles for hours. The family pooch seems to have picked up on Macon's slow withdraw into himself and begins to act out with increasingly vicious behaviors. The scene where Macon tries to slip a letter under her door explaining why he can't have dinner with her. When Muriel pulls him into an embrace, her face becomes luminous with light, her eyes close, as if in a dream, then flick open when he mentions his wife---even though he doesn't know he's still in love with his wife, it registers with her.
In complete opposition to Hurt's understated freeze-out; Geena Davis deservedly snapped up the supporting actress Oscar that year for her Muriel Pritchett supporting role that complemented him perfectly.
Ever so often there's a motivational cut to a flashback needlessly explaining some plot point. It's kind of weird how everything now seems over-explained. It's almost as if part of the script was mistakenly formatted with an Easy-eye font. Example: Macon writes books for people who don't like to travel, the whole idea is to get through the trip without being bothered once. Which of course, becomes the big metaphor for his life: get through it without a single shock or stumble. Paradoxically, in contrast with everything else in the film, the Director Lawrence Kasdan has wisely chosen not to overemphasize William Hurt's wonderfully understated performance.
Despite an overall depreciation for this film---it seems a tad overstated now; Hurt's performance has really appreciated. There's too much pain in love. He'd rather sail through the rest of his life, alone and safe. He reminded me a lot of the recent protagonist in Tom Ford's "A single Man" Both George and Macon are one dark night away from swallowing an ice bucket full of sleeping pills, but both men stubbornly carry on. On this, maybe the fifth or sixth time I've seen this, the editing of the movie has seriously soured my enjoyment of it. O how the mighty have fallen.
The Accidental tourist ~ 7/10
http://www.impawards.com/1988/accide...urist_xlg.html