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Summary: What a Good Trip!
Review: "The Daytippers" is a hilarious romp through the life of a tight-knit family. Cheating, coupledom, and sexuality are the name of the game here, and they all make for such a funny and heart-felt story. Highly reccomended if you like humour that puts the character at the pit of their emotions!!! Go see this now!
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Summary: My only complaint? I wanted more
Review: "The Daytrippers" concerns a young woman (Hope Davis) who suspects her husband is cheating on her. She decides to drive into Manhattan and confront him, and her mother, father, sister, and sister's boyfriend come along for moral support (hence the "day trip" of the title). This movie is funny and terrifically acted, and the characters are all great, so likeable, complicated, and real. The movie ends ambiguously, which I admired (no "Hollywood endings" here), but I really wanted to know how life was going to turn out for all of them. I guess a sequel is highly unlikely, but I for one would be first in line if it ever happened! I highly recommend this film for rental or outright purchase.
Rating: 
Summary: it was probably a very good movie
Review: ...but i hated it. I found the movie completely unengaging: the characters were unlikable (with the possible exception of Posey's character) and the mother was so irritating i wanted to reach through the screen and strangle her. (Meara did a great job playing such an awful witch.) For the most part, the movie seemed to have a strong sense of reality about it: with realistic character flaws, unpolished dialogue, and the jagged edges one can expect to encounter in life. There wasn't much plot in the movie, and I suppose it frustrated me so badly because it was too much like real life and not the escape that fiction is supposed to be. The bottom line is that I found The Daytrippers to be realistic and well-made but absolutely intolerable.
Rating:
Summary: it was probably a very good movie
Review: ...but i hated it. I found the movie completely unengaging: the characters were unlikable (with the possible exception of Posey's character) and the mother was so irritating i wanted to reach through the screen and strangle her. (Meara did a great job playing such an awful witch.) For the most part, the movie seemed to have a strong sense of reality about it: with realistic character flaws, unpolished dialogue, and the jagged edges one can expect to encounter in life. There wasn't much plot in the movie, and I suppose it frustrated me so badly because it was too much like real life and not the escape that fiction is supposed to be. The bottom line is that I found The Daytrippers to be realistic and well-made but absolutely intolerable.
Rating: 
Summary: .
Review: A charming, pleasant little comedy, which avoids triteness, and all-too-easy cliches, quite admirably. As they say, this is the kind of flick that gives independant films a good name. I found the humor of the film richly appealing primarily because it never imposes itself on you. Amusing situations are allowed to be amusing in and of themselves; they aren't centered around specific jokes that are being shoved at you. As a result of its subtlety, the movie is never quite hilarious -- but what it gains is a consistent atmosphere of agreeable charm and surprisingly three-dimensional characters. The attempt to mix in such intense drama towards the end of the film feels a bit heavy-handed, and is maybe a bit overdone; and the ending itself is a bit befuddling and mildly unsatisfactory. Yet these qualms are minor, and well outweighed by the film's merits. Liev Schreiber is a treat as Posey's boyfriend, and Campbell Scott pops up, amusingly, as a sleazy author. Hope Davis fits her role like a glove, and is also one of the cutest women I've ever seen. All in all, a fine movie, and a very agreeable way to pass 90 minutes.
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Summary: I loved this movie.
Review: A movie of this quality only comes by once a year. Indie Queen Parker Posey is brilliant, as always. The characters are so real you feel like you actually know them. To call this wonderful film a "slice of life" would be too simplistic. This is a journey of discovery. If you will sit in the car with them for 90 minutes, you might even come to learn something about yourself. Filmmaking at its best is when several characters can be in a place, not talking, and you know what each is thinking about and you care about them. See it.
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Summary: The family that fights together..
Review: Eliza Malone (Hope Davis) thinks she's happily married to Louis D'Amico--until a note that may or may not be a love letter falls out of his pocket. Eliza goes to her mother--played by Anna Meara--for advice, and Mrs Malone decides that the best thing to do, under the circumstances, is for the entire family to load up in the station wagon, drive to New York, find Louis, confront him, and demand the truth. Things immediately go wrong--the heat in the station wagon doesn't work, so by the time the Malones make it to New York with Eliza, and her sister, Jo (played by Parker Posey), and her fiance, Carl (Liev Schreiber), everyone is frozen, tempers are short, and the family members are soon at each other's throats. The mission to find Louis--and the truth, brings the family into contact with many misfits along the way--an odd father-son team who become unwilling good samaritans, a squabbling pair of sisters who are dividing up the spoils after their mother's death, a sex-obsessed junior editor, and a hysterically lonely party-goer are just some of the characters they meet on their search for Louis. The beauty of this film--for me, at least, was in the family dynamic that exists--Anna Meara plays the true battle-ax who rules with an iron hand, and her subdued, detached husband finally finds the energy to defy her. Carl, as Jo's fiance is wonderful as the naive--yet pretentious--would-be-writer--and while he manages to impress Mrs Malone with his novel about the man with the Pointer's head--he simply bores everyone else, and resentment rains down on Carl's head as he becomes Mrs Malone's new favourite. Parker Posey as Jo Malone is suitably brittle and sarcastic. Stanley Tucci as the tortured Louis is magnificent--as always. And Hope Davis, as the wife who loves and wants to believe in her husband, really plays her role extremely well. Her emotional responses were perfect. The acting in this film was quite superb, and the looks cast back and forth between the characters are absolutely priceless.
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Summary: Great writing, well executed.
Review: For the most part, I agree with the other reviews I've seen here, with two exceptions, and I'll concentrate on those. Describing the Parker Posey character as "promiscuous" and "one-note" is, I believe, missing the mark. The day trip is significant for her in that as it continues, her feelings for her boyfriend are tested as she hears him express his views and describe the book he's writing, then sees his views tested by a man of strong intellect (who also tests her commitment to the relationship). And I think that the reason that Ann Meara makes another viewer want to put a hole in his TV is that she is so on-target with her portrayal of a controlling mother and wife. This film is, for the most part, funny, but it is ultimately surprising, sad, and touching.
Rating:
Summary: Davis is brilliant...
Review: Get ready...1999 may just be the year of Hope Davis. While "The Daytrippers" works on many different levels, it is the performance of Davis that propels this indie flick over the crowd. Stanley Tucci's cameo is also impresive; in fact, the only poor portrayal in the film was Anne Meara, whose hysterics made me want to put a hole in my television. Still, an uncoventional, biting "road movie."
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Summary: WITH A FAMILY LIKE THIS...
Review: Hope Davis and Stanley Tucci play a married couple, and one day Davis awakes to find unmistakable clues that her husband is having an affair with a woman named "Sandy". This positively shakes her suburban life to its core, so she decides to enlist the help of her neurotic family to find out what she should do. Her overbearing and obnoxious mother (Anne Meara) insists that the family pile into the station wagon and go into the city to find out once and for all whether he is two timing. The father and mother sit in the front, while Davis sits in the back with her sarcastic sister (Parker Posey) and Posey's pseudo-intellectual philosophical boyfriend (a fantastic Liev Schreiber, who tells the family about his written works, thinking himself quite deep when he tells about a story about a pointer (dog) who cannot point. Very full of himself). The film chronicles this journey through the city, trying to learn about this supposed affair. By nightfall Davis discovers that Tucci has lied to her and did not go to a publishing party (or something similar) as he said he was. (Posey and Schreiber go to the publishing party and meet Campbell Scott, playing a writer here, and Schreiber makes fun of him, mostly out of insecurity. Once they leave Posey pretends she left her handbag in the party, finds Scott and makes out with him and gets his phone number. Leading to a near break-up between Schreiber and her). Meanwhile Davis goes to a real party where her husband has gone. She runs into a very funny Marcia Gay Harden. Davis wanders and finally she spots Tucci (he does not see her). .... This is an entertaining and somewhat sad film with excellent dialogue and a wonderful portrayal of the dynamics of family communication.
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