World Traveler

Rating:
Summary: Wandering along the edge
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Wandering along the edge
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: It leaves you cold...
Review: 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.