The Daytrippers

There's not much to the flimsy narrative of this dysfunctional road movie; writer/director Greg Mottola simply tosses a family of neurotics (plus a pretentious boyfriend, engagingly personified by flavor-of-some-upcoming-month-let's-hope Liev Schreiber) into a station wagon and sends them to Manhattan, ostensibly to confirm or deny the possibility that docile daughter Eliza's (Hope Davis) husband (Stanley Tucci) is having an affair. This question is answered in due course, but the pleasure, as always, is in the journey, which involves numerous diversionary pit stops and a horde of delightfully quirky supporting characters. The high-spirited fun is tainted somewhat, it's true, by an ill-advised last-minute twist; it isn't a bad idea per se, but once Mottola presents it, the film simply ends, as if this revelation didn't require another hour (minimally) to be accorded the respect it deserves. (Imagine that the most discussed scene in The Crying Game had also been the final scene.) Still, this miscalculation is plot-related, and all of the reasons that The Daytrippers is worth seeing are not, so the aftertaste isn't as sour as it otherwise might have been. Slight, but often hilarious. Recommended. (M. D'Angelo) [Blu-ray/DVD Review—Nov. 19, 2019—Criterion, 87 min., R, DVD: $29.95; Blu-ray: $39.95—Making its latest appearance on DVD and debut on Blu-ray, 1996’s The Daytrippers features a great transfer with an uncompressed stereo soundtrack on the Blu-ray release. Extras include audio commentary (by writer-director Greg Mottola, editor Anne McCabe, and producer Steven Soderbergh), conversations between Mottola and costars Parker Posey, Liev Schreiber, and Campbell Scott (39 min.) and Mottola and costar Hope Davis (21 min.), Mottola’s 1985 short 'The Hatbox' with optional commentary (5 min.), and an essay by critic Emily Nussbaum. Bottom line: this engaging indie film makes a welcome debut on Blu-ray.]