This curiosity filled the screen on Sundance recently and I found myself watching it right through to the end. In it, a thirty-something married man panics when he finds himself psychologically strained by an excess of responsibility on the one hand and too much testosterone on the other. Thus begins a cross country flight in his appropriately yuppie Volvo station wagon to find himself.
What happens next is almost as preposterous as the apparent idea that there is anything likable about the guy at all. Like Tom Ewell in The Seven Year Itch, actor Crudup mugs his way through the vicissitudes of meeting one improbable and willowy blonde, brunette, or redhead (all of whom seem to be taller than he) after another. Each one is either too smothering or loony, offering him the altogether too-easy option of dumping them as he makes his way to Oregon to link up with his estranged father, who proves just as selfish and unpleasant as himself -- thus hastening a predictable conclusion in which he finally gets exactly what he doesn't deserve.
It is not so much that there are innumerable geographical goofs in the film that annoy the hell out of me (most of it was either filmed from helicopters or in odd parts of Oregon and Alabama -- say what? -- including sudden impossible changes in weather and one shot of the Minneapolis airport with mountains in the background), but rather that the main character exudes an ambiguity unrelieved by a plot that goes nowhere.
One interesting and commendable feature, however, is that of showing out-of-sequence flashes in his head that are alternately dreamlike and threatening. Although it's been done before, there is much to be said about this cinematic device as displayed here.
What happens next is almost as preposterous as the apparent idea that there is anything likable about the guy at all. Like Tom Ewell in The Seven Year Itch, actor Crudup mugs his way through the vicissitudes of meeting one improbable and willowy blonde, brunette, or redhead (all of whom seem to be taller than he) after another. Each one is either too smothering or loony, offering him the altogether too-easy option of dumping them as he makes his way to Oregon to link up with his estranged father, who proves just as selfish and unpleasant as himself -- thus hastening a predictable conclusion in which he finally gets exactly what he doesn't deserve.
It is not so much that there are innumerable geographical goofs in the film that annoy the hell out of me (most of it was either filmed from helicopters or in odd parts of Oregon and Alabama -- say what? -- including sudden impossible changes in weather and one shot of the Minneapolis airport with mountains in the background), but rather that the main character exudes an ambiguity unrelieved by a plot that goes nowhere.
One interesting and commendable feature, however, is that of showing out-of-sequence flashes in his head that are alternately dreamlike and threatening. Although it's been done before, there is much to be said about this cinematic device as displayed here.