The Accidental Tourist (1988)

“I’m beginning to think that maybe it’s not just how much you love someone. Maybe what matters is who you are when you’re with them. ” – Macon

Number of Times Seen – 2 (1 Mar 2012 and and 13 Nov 2016)

Brief Synopsis – After the death of his son, an accomplished travel writer tries to find himself when his wife requests a divorce.

My Take on it – I saw this film a few years back for the first time and besides the quirky and unique role played by Geena Davis, I wasn’t impressed very much by it.

I decided to give it a try one more time to see if now it would make a bigger impression on me.

I have never been the biggest fan of William Hurt and I think he was very overrated in the 80’s as an actor and can’t seem to understand what the big deal was with him.

In this film, he gives a very low-key performance that IMHO is pretty average along with the film itself.

I usually enjoy films by Lawrence Kasdan, but this is one of the ones that I just couldn’t connect with it at all.

The supporting cast is quite good with David Ogden Stiers, Ed Begley Jr. Kathleen Turner (who is billed a  lead for some reason), Amy Wright and Bill Pullman helping out but not even they can make this film more enjoyable because it just feels too much of a downer instead of inspiring like one would expect.

Geena Davis is very quirky in her role here and she deservingly won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for this role.

Bottom Line – Yet another film that baffles me that it was nominated for Best Picture. Hurt was very overrated an actor in the 80’s and his performance here is very low-key.  Davis deservingly won an Oscar for her role as a free spirit trying to connect with Hurt’s lead character.  Nice supporting cast helps this film a bit, but overall it’s a downer and comes off as very average instead of groundbreaking.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – Though actually a major significant leading role in the picture, Geena Davis won her Oscar in the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award category, and was not nominated in the Best Actress section. Several years later, Davis would be Oscar nominated for the Best Actress in a Leading Role Academy Award in 1992 for Thelma & Louise (1991) but would lose out to Jodie Foster for The Silence of the Lambs (1991). (From IMDB)

Rating – BAFTA Worthy

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