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| Hope Davis, Liev Schreiber, and Parker Posey in The Daytrippers |
The Daytrippers is a mashup of subgenres: It's a road movie, a marital dramedy, a midlife crisis fable, and even an extended mother-in-law joke. No wonder it took so long to find a distributor: How do you market a movie like this? But it's also a wonderful sleeper find, if you just happen to come across it on the Criterion Channel, as I did. First of all, it's a terrific ensemble of skilled actors, some of them cast against type, like Marcia Gay Harden as a ditz in an extended cameo. The premise is this: Louis and Eliza D'Amico (Stanley Tucci and Hope Davis) are apparently happily married, but when he leaves their Long Island home one day for his editorial job in the city, she finds a note that suggests he may be having an affair with someone named Sandy. When she tells her mother (Anne Meara) about this, Mom insists that her husband (Pat McNamara) drive everyone into Manhattan to confront Louis and uncover the identity of Sandy. "Everyone" includes Eliza's sister, Jo (Parker Posey), and her boyfriend, Carl (Liev Schreiber), who happen to be visiting for the Thanksgiving holiday. This is not exactly your close-knit family, as it's held together loosely by the domineering mother, kept just this side of caricature by Meara's shrewdly calculated performance. The rest is a series of misadventures, as the family follows a series of clues and false leads, winding up in often hilarious but also poignant little side trips. It's the lack of go-ahead story that I think tripped up some of the movie's initial critics, like Roger Ebert, who found the movie, especially Meara's character, annoying. But there's so much about The Daytrippers that's closely observed and skillfully performed that I found myself wanting to see it again just to watch the way some brilliant performances -- Schreiber is especially wonderful in a role that's a 180 from tough guy Ray Donovan -- mesh into a true ensemble.
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