Tag Archives: road movies

Amazon Prime, foreign films, Quirky comedies

Don’t Read This on a Plane: Meandering European Road Movie

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Don’t Read This on a Plane , directed by Stuart McBratney, an independent comedy-drama from 2020, an example of an emerging genre of movie (very popular on Netflix lately) of foreign films geared towards Americans. Although it takes place in Europe and stars French actress Sophie Desmarais, it is 90% in English. This is believable as Jovana is a writer doing a book tour across Europe, where English is the international language. Oddly enough, the segment that takes place in France did not have subtitles, at least not in the version on Amazon I watched.

This is a rather slight but enjoyable movie about an author whose book publisher goes bankrupt right before her book tour begins. Jovana is broke, married to an American (another convenient way to keep everything in English) who is working on a ship and cannot understand her pleas for help due to poor phone reception.

Jovana is forced to rough it by hitchhiking and sleeping on couches. She uses an app called MOAF (mattress on floor) that arranges free or low cost stays in people’s homes. This app may be fictional, but there was an actual site and app called Couchsurfing that really served this function (I’ve actually used it years ago, but the last I heard it is either defunct or hacked by scammers).

Jovana manages her extremely low budget travel as she moves through countries such as Italy, Portugal, Greece, Romania, and The Netherlands. Is all this realistic? Probably the least likely aspect of it all is the free publicity she gets when readers are actually thrown off planes when reading her book.

The title of the movie is also the title of her book. It’s a book of erotic stories recounting Jovana’s sexual encounters with women which may or may not be true. During book readings, audience members ask her if the stories are true and she responds with coy evasions.

The plot is very thin and meandering, which is often the case with road movies. Jovana meets various characters in different cities. She has an ongoing phone-based flirtation with a woman who is organizing her appearance in Romania. She has frustrating attempts to contact her husband.

If you like action and heavily plotted stories, you’ll find Don’t Read This on a Plane boring if not meaningless. I have a high tolerance for this kind of film, so I mostly enjoyed it. Sophie Desmarais is a likable and attractive lead who helps to carry the thin plot. Another upsides of the film is that it is shot on location, as the director describes in an interview with Filmink. Locations can add a great deal to the atmosphere. Low budget indie films are often claustrophobic due to limited settings and are often not even shot in the places where they are supposedly set.

The film also explores, in its lighthearted fashion, the relationship between fiction and reality and whether a writer is obligated to tell the truth (or if it even matters whether they do or not).

Don’t Read This on a Plane is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. You may also be able to find it for free on YouTube and elsewhere.

 

buddy movies, indie films, Netflix, road movies

The Long Dumb Road

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The Long Dumb Road, directed by Hannah Fidell, is a fairly standard road/buddy movie, the kind that was fairly common in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. It’s a meandering, episodic tale of two mismatched travelers: young, naive Nat (Tony Revolori) and 30-something burned-out drifter Richard (Jason Mantzoukas). Nat is headed for art school, driving from Austin, Texas to LA. Along the way, his car breaks down and he meets Richard, who’s just storming off from his auto mechanic job.

First of all, the movie’s title is a bit misleading as it conjures up the Dumb & Dumber franchise. In fact, that’s probably why I didn’t watch it sooner. Not that I’m above enjoying a stereotypical Hollywood gross-out comedy every so often, but two Dumb & Dumbers (or were there more?) were enough for me, thanks anyway. Other than the fact that these are also buddy films that largely take place on the road, the tone of The Long Dumb Road is very different. There’s comedy, but it’s far more nuanced and relies more on dialog and character development than the better-known franchise.

The dynamic between Nat and Richard is fairly typical in one way, with uptight Nat paired with the loose cannon Richard. There’s a certain amount of tension along the way. Nat manages to offend Richard with his comfortable lifestyle (he’s traveling with a vehicle and bankroll from his middle-class parents), while Richard has to hustle day-to-day to get by. There’s also the possibility that Richard, who has ties to unsavory characters, may be setting Nat up in some way.

Along the way, the two get into a bar fight, track down Richard’s ex with disastrous results, and pick up a pair of adventurous women heading in the same direction. As with many road movies, the meandering plot is less important than the atmosphere and interaction between the buddies.

Both Revolori and Mantzoukas bring enough shading to their characters to prevent them from being mere caricatures. They’re both self-aware enough to have some idea of how they appear to the world and each other. This makes for an interesting chemistry and allows the film to veer between comedy and drama. As with all good road movies, there’s also the scenery, in this case mostly long, empty stretches of road and desert with bars, gas stations, and small towns scattered along the way.

The Long, Dumb Road isn’t an especially powerful or memorable film, and it probably wouldn’t survive at multiplexes (though as of now, movie theaters are still shut down anyway). However, it’s a nice alternative if you’re looking for an old-fashioned and not entirely predictable indie film to watch on Netflix.