Customer Reviews

World Traveler (Widescreen)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This has got to be one of the most boring not to mention WORST movies I've ever seen. The only saving grace is that Julianne Moore is in it and I feel embarrased for her. What a terrible waste of talent and her time. Typically, I love road movies but do yourself a favor and pass on this one. The main character is so selfish and loathsome that it makes it impossible to immense yourself in the movie which doesn't matter anyway because the movie itself goes nowhere.

A painful tale of self discovery where the honesty and brillant cinematography provoke a real sense of discomfort throughout, yet in the exposure of painful sentiments, this viewer was forced to consider much.

The title of the review pretty much says it all. View at your own risk.

Watching a film like this one, you are reminded of how Hollywood has refined the telling of stories into a kind of shorthand, removing ambiguities and complexities, for quick consumption. Central characters are sympathetic and their behavior understandable in a recognizable plot line and a familiar movie genre. The filmmakers set up easy expectations and then either successfully or unsuccessfully fulfill them.

This film has its conventions. It's a road movie that takes the main character cross country from New York to Oregon, meeting people along the way, each illuminating part of his journey. But it frustrates expectations because it gives us a character who is unsympathetic almost from the first scene and whose behavior is hard to understand and sometimes appalling. His inner conflicts are not spelled out for us. Instead, they are signalled by his agitation and heavy drinking, his strange dreams, and the film's fragmented editing. What accounts for his behavior becomes clearer in the end, but even then, the revelations do not exonerate him.

This is a case where watching the film again with the director's commentary helps you come to terms with a story that departs so far from movie conventions. And you can begin to appreciate some of the creative choices made, from the script all the way through to post-production. After leaving his wife and child, abusing another man's trusting friendship, and drunkenly seducing women he finds in bars, the protagonist ironically meets his match by trying to "help" a woman in distress, whom he discovers is far more distressed than he has bargained for. This failed effort at self-redemption further confounds our interest in him. And so the film goes until the journey reaches its end, old questions are answered, some issues are resolved, and choices are made that may be the right ones for a change.

The film was received less than enthusiastically by critics and audiences when it was released. It may some day gain more of a following and certainly deserves a higher regard. Billy Crudup, once again, shows a remarkable ability to live inside a complex and off-putting character. Julianne Moore (who for once is a director's wife on par with the other talent in the cast) and David Keith are excellent. The cinematograhy alternates shadowy night scenes and claustrophobic interiors with brilliant outdoor scenes and sweeping on-the-road landscapes that grow more striking as the characters move westward. The Willie Nelson songs on the soundtrack introduce an undertone of sweet sadness.

I recommend this film for anyone who likes road movies and stories that depart from convention and require a patience and willingness to accept ambiguities for the clues they reveal about characters' inner lives.

More than sex, food or survival, we are creatures driven to find meaning in our lives (or so it's said by those who claim to know such things). A recent film that taps into that mindset, with varying degrees of success, is now available in a fine digital edition.

Handsome Cal (Billy Crudup) is driving aimlessly across the country in WORLD TRAVELER. He's left his wife and kid and is looking for something else. Something better. Something he can't quite define. Trouble is, he spends so much time drinking and in bars that trouble is his constant companion. This sly film that never explains itself reminds me of Jack Nicholson's rootless wanderings across open landscapes in The Passenger and Five Easy Pieces. Directed by Bart Freundlich (The Myth of Fingerprints) and with affecting performances by Crudup, Julianne Moore, Karen Allen and others, World Traveller is irritating, provocative and open to interpretation.

World Traveler is about a guy named Cal (Billy Crudup) in search of self or perhaps a better self. At the beginning of the film he leaves his New York life of wife and child, for no apparent reason because things seem good, for a life on the road. Along the way he meets people and gets in minor adventures. Alas, this film suffers from lack of plot and direction.

What a bizarre movie! Cal is not the kind of guy people want to root for. On his first stop he becomes friends with a man named Carl by forcing Carl to drink and hit on women with him. When Carl's WIFE tells Cal he is an alcoholic Cal tries to kiss her. Then he picks up a hitchhiker ... He runs into a guy in the airport he went to high school with, and although Cal doesn't remember him, the guy offers to buy him a drink so Cal accepts. ... Then there is Julianne Moore's turn in the film. She appears to be fighting for he sanity when Cal meets her, but how far gone she is, is almost absurd. ... And then there is the whole issue of Cal's unexplained abandonment of his wife and son, and his infidelities. Cal is rude, self-centered, conceited, a bad drunk, and he doesn't seem to learn anything. For the duration of the film he seems to be searching for some kind of epiphany ...

So, all in all, Cal seems like a better guy at the beginning of the film then at the end. I'm not sure this is what writer/director Bart Freundlich was going for. Billy Crudup is good and the film is very well shot, with beautiful landscapes, but it is not enough to save this film from it's self. Ultimately, it is trite.

WORLD TRAVELER is one of those films that sneaks up on you. Shot in a remembered/dreamed/imagined/reality melange the gifted writer/director never lets us forget that decisions we make are very much driven by the moment in which we make them. Quite simply outlined, Billy Crudup plays a young husband/father who suddenly leaves his 'comfortable' mariage and fatherhood and takes off for parts unknown to find a better life. He manages to encounter sex at every stop, bizarre fellow travellers in as much need as he, and finally ends up confronting his father on the opposite coast, a man who left him as a child in very much the same way. There are no resolutions here, just a plane of travel of the spirit that reinforces the idea that we rarely understand, much less appreciate, our own place in life....until we leave it or lose it. Superb acting from Billy Crudup, and especially Julianne Moore who once again proves that she can take on any role at all and find the essence of the character. The supporting cast is uniformly fine. A very solid film.

World Traveler is yet another fairy tale movie of leaving to discover oneself. The movie is wonderfully filmed but it is without a soul.

Crudup plays Cal a petulant, disillusioned architect who for selfish reason abandones his wife and child to travel America in search for himself and his father. In the process he causes an recovering alcoholic to relaspe and hits on his wife and leaves, he abandones a young woman in an airport, in a chance meeting with a high school companion he becomes drunk and says he can't even remember him, and in his one effort to help someone with serious mental problems he ends up abandoning her at a Dairy Queen.

Now eventually he finds his father and says OK Dad why did you leave. The answer is shallow and trite but is enough of a epiphany for Cal to bring this movie to a fairy tale ending. The problem is that Cal is CALlous and his arc to kind and loving holds no water.

When you watch fairy tales like You've Got Mail or Serendipity or Notting Hill you leave with a feeling of possibility even if you know the chances are one in a million. There is something sweet and moral about them. With this movie however you know that there is no chance and dread to think of what more damage he will inflict upon his family under the auspices of self-discovery.

There is little compelling reason to watch this movie. But if you have been left and are anxiously awaiting the return of your lover or partner you may want to watch this movie and decide if you really want to see them come through the door again.