Road trip not worth following
★★★ A record company A&R man is hanging on to his career by his fingernails.
He promises his boss that he can sign a very sought-after young band. Only minutes later, a young woman turns up claiming to be his long estranged Dad’s nurse and PA. Dad – who was once an internationally feted photographer – is on his last legs, she says, but he is proposing a cross-country drive to drop off a package of Kodachrome film to be developed, at the very last store in the US that still provides the service, in the very last week it will still be open.
"No chance,’’ says junior, fairly ablaze with petulism. But, since Dad’s business manager also has contacts with the band he needs to save his career, junior comes around.
And a three-way road trip of sorts is under way, with Ed Harris, Elizabeth Olsen and Jason Sudeikis in the leads and a serviceable selection of American characters filling out the supports.
Director Mark Raso – who made the quite lovely in 2014 – directs Jonathan Tropper’s script with plenty of flourish and some accomplished movement and framing. But no amount of film-making skill will make
credible or engrossing.
Yes, Tropper’s screenplay is based on a tiny kernel of truth. There really was tiny business in Kansas that became the last shop in the world to process Kodachrome film. But the unoriginal drama Tropper ladles over that thin base is too lumpen and predictable to function.
The only thing really holding the slightly clapped-out premise together is a mesmerising shift from the apparently infallible Harris who’s playing a mean old man but seems unafraid to be just that. There’s no ‘‘lovable old rogue’’ twinkling behind Harris’ eyes here. Just an occasionally foul and unapologetic man we struggle to connect with.
Opposite him, Sudeikis puts in a performance that might be good enough for TV drama, but doesn’t really light up the big screen anything like he should, given that he appears in nearly every scene and the film is ostensibly his to carry.
More problematic is that writer Tropper chooses to have Sudeikis and Olsen hit the sheets together.
Olsen plays ‘‘Zooey’’ (really?) as a level-headed young woman but Sudeikis’ middle-aged divorcee never seems anything more than a whinging man-child. Sudeikis does make Matt a credible character, but doesn’t get within a long day’s walk of making Matt shaggable.
It’s also impossible not to be reminded of Alexander Payne’s
– which was clogging up the award’s nominations lists only four years ago.
apes a lot of that film’s beats and moments, but completely misses the stripped back integrity Payne and his lead Bruce Dern located.
Give me the choice between watching for the 10th time tonight, or for the second, and I’ll race you to the nearest video store, how ever far away that may be.