The Daytrippers

1996's THE DAYTRIPPERS joins the ranks of Funniest Road Trip Movies, and finds that difficult balance between indie and sitcom humor.  Two very different things.  FLIRTING WITH DISASTER, also from 1996, likewise managed it.  Both films feature different generations of actors, each representing a different brand of comedy.  And of course the clashes therein.  It could be deadly, but in in his debut writer/director Greg Mottola resists the temptation to overdo it, for his characters to entirely wear out their welcomes.  They do come close...

The day trip involves five rather frustrated souls piled into a station wagon.  Long Island to Manhattan.  The day after Thanksgiving.  That morning Eliza (Hope Davis) found a love letter/poem her husband Louis (Stanley Tucci) dropped out of his attache and feared the worst.  Her mother Rita (Anne Meara) thinks she should confront him.  Soon they will join her father Jim (Pat McNamara), her sister Jo (Parker Posey), and Jo's live-in boyfriend Carl (Liev Schreiber) on this journey to and through the City. For moral support.  They serve mainly to make an iffy situation worse, of course. 

Rita is overbearing and nosy,  Jim is (understandably) cranky.  Jo is bitter.  Carl can't stop talking about his novel, the one with a protagonist who has the head of a dog.  The car makes a funny noise that will stop only if they turn off the heater.  Eliza finds little solace in these distractions from her unease and uncertainty.  Could her beloved really be cheating on her?

Once in the city there will be some detours.  Before and after our gang find that Louis has taken the afternoon off from work.  He's expected to attend a party that evening.  In the meanwhile, we will meet some colorful and/or sad New Yorkers.  I won't spoil the discoveries.

One of the reasons THE DAYTRIPPERS appealed to me was I lived in NYC for a time in 1996.  This movie captures some of how that looked and felt.  I encountered a gallery of folks, some simple and others too complex for their own good.  Modest and pretentious.  Thoughtful and brash.  They're well represented in this movie.  I bought everyone's performances.   

I also have a soft spot for independent films of this era.  It seemed Posey was in most of them.  Her work here plays most of the familiar notes (that patented personality) you would expect, maybe a little more low key than usual.  Schreiber is quite funny as the insufferable intellectual, though he reveals a heart.  Indie stalwart Campbell Scott turns up as a charming novelist.  Up and comer Marcia Gay Harden expectedly steals her few scenes.

Some viewers will find Meara overly abrasive, but she easily could've been far more obnoxious.  In her I saw several of my (mostly now deceased) Brooklyn relatives.