fedor8 Crudup (great name; "the upper crud") suddenly walks out of his successful life when he realizes that his wife, kid, job as architect, and the tall NY buildings are suffocating him. The poor dear. I can certainly identify with part of it: who the hell wants a 3 year-old kid who sounds weirder over the phone than E.T. in his most alien moments? Who wants a 3 year-old kid, period. Still, our rather short anti-hero produced the little bastard of his own free will hence one of the first things we learn about Crudup is that he's an irresponsible, selfish git. The movie showcases his (dis)spirited "search for himself" - or put in more simple terms, he uses this personal mental crisis as an opportunity for a nice little unplanned (sex) holiday.As he makes his way to the first small town, Crudup reveals that it isn't just his strange son or The Empire State Building that became a burden for his small shoulders. His genitals got that certain itch, the one that guys get all the time. Being good-looking (something the movie tells us over and over, though not that he is practically a midget) he gets to sleep with several women in no time. Apparently, he possesses such raw, irresistible sexual magnetism that a waitress, played by once-pretty Karen Allen, practically bribes her colleague to let her have him. "Would you like those eggs with a salad and a pair of small breasts?" Crudup nods and off they go.To cut a long story short, what saves this movie from being unwatchable is that it's a road movie, and road movies always have elements of surprise to them, if nothing else. The best part of WT was the very effective scene in which Julianne Moore turns out to be a demented schizophrenic paranoid that talks to empty chairs.The worst part of the movie is Crudup's visit to his father, played by Keith, an actor only 14 years Crudup's senior. When you add to that the fact that nowadays older actors and actresses always look younger than they really are - due to plastic surgery - we end up with a father-and-son situation that doesn't exactly lend realism to the proceedings. "Dad, why did you have me when you were just 10?" This is almost Oliverstoneian casting! (Jolie and Farrell as mother and son. "Mom, how come Ancient Greece had the medical know-how to get you pregnant at the age of 3?" Ditto Close and Gibson in "Hamlet".) Unfortunately, he never poses this essential question. Instead, the writer/director Friendly Beard uses this opportunity to make excuses for Crudup's selfishness. "He was a poor little boy, deserted by his equally mean father at a young age, so that's why Crudup is such a bastard now." Explanation offered, excuse rammed down out throats, case closed. Like father, like son, like Hollywood, "like me, for it's not my fault destiny has been unkind to me".This is the kind of liberal, left-wing Psychology 101 baloney that we've been served by American dramas for decades now. The recent trend is that no-one is ultimately responsible for their actions hence we should weep for all the sociopaths, psychopaths and other degenerates out there. Poor little innocent things, run over by a harsh life... "Please, Mr.Judge, don't give Mr.Mass-Murderer the death penalty, for it is a cruel and unusual punishment for a lost soul that we are trying so desperately to save. His father was an alcoholic and his mother watched "The Cosby Show" every day. It's not his fault he turned out that way..." It's the same with Crudup: we're supposed to be moved, touched by this last-minute revelation, as if he were the only kid who grew up without a parent.Anti-social behaviour, whether it be just regular adultery or genocide, has been scientifically proved to stem mostly from the individual's DNA structure, much less from his upbringing. Psychopaths are born, not created (not referring to Crudup, though). The result of this new trend is that people are becoming softies with excuses ready for every single thing they do wrong, and if that isn't a precursor to the eventual fall of the Western World, I don't know what is.Nice shots of the American landscapes, and a horrible soundtrack by Willie Nelson and Bonnie Rat.

noralee "World Traveler" could be a video for Bruce Springsteen's "Hungry Heart" - "Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack/ I went out for a ride and I never went back/ Like a river that don't know where it's flowing/ I took a wrong turn and I just kept going. . ./Everybody needs a place to rest/ Everybody wants to have a home/ Don't make no difference what nobody says/ Ain't nobody like to be alone."Instead, writer/director Bart Freundlich uses that ultimate road warrior Willie Nelson and his songs, particularly some recent duets, as the expressive soundtrack, concluding with "Across the Borderline": "When you reach the broken promise land,/ Every dream slips through your hand,/ You'll know it's too late to change your mind./ 'Cause you paid the price to come to far,/ Just to wind up where you are,/ And you're still just across the borderline./. . . Hope remains when pride is gone,/ And it keeps you moving on,/ Calling you across the borderline./ And you're still just across the borderline." I'd follow Billy Crudup just about anywhere in the movies, so I gave this picaresque, existential introspection space, especially admiring Terry Stacey's cinematography. He has a European's appreciation for going across the U.S. Utilizing Crudup's chiseled visage to critical effect in the script as if it were written specifically for him, his character's alcoholic break-down is mostly visual, through akimbo body language and his dreams, as he knock-hockeys off a series of even more seeking or troubled characters until his meeting up with his past and what could be his future seem to straighten him out.The opening and closing NYC setting shots of the World Trade Center of course tell us what day this was filmed before. (originally filmed 5/4/2002)

B24 This curiosity filled the screen on Sundance recently and I found myself watching it right through to the end. In it, a thirty-something married man panics when he finds himself psychologically strained by an excess of responsibility on the one hand and too much testosterone on the other. Thus begins a cross country flight in his appropriately yuppie Volvo station wagon to find himself.What happens next is almost as preposterous as the apparent idea that there is anything likable about the guy at all. Like Tom Ewell in The Seven Year Itch, actor Crudup mugs his way through the vicissitudes of meeting one improbable and willowy blonde, brunette, or redhead (all of whom seem to be taller than he) after another. Each one is either too smothering or loony, offering him the altogether too-easy option of dumping them as he makes his way to Oregon to link up with his estranged father, who proves just as selfish and unpleasant as himself -- thus hastening a predictable conclusion in which he finally gets exactly what he doesn't deserve.It is not so much that there are innumerable geographical goofs in the film that annoy the hell out of me (most of it was either filmed from helicopters or in odd parts of Oregon and Alabama -- say what? -- including sudden impossible changes in weather and one shot of the Minneapolis airport with mountains in the background), but rather that the main character exudes an ambiguity unrelieved by a plot that goes nowhere.One interesting and commendable feature, however, is that of showing out-of-sequence flashes in his head that are alternately dreamlike and threatening. Although it's been done before, there is much to be said about this cinematic device as displayed here.

spiritwriter What a waste of talent -- although it appears that Crudup in real life is a lot more like the vapid, self- absorbed, character-less character he portrays in this disappointing movie.In art, sometimes the empty spaces reveal more than the painted or created content. What this movie reveals is the unconsciousness and the contradictory/competing, unresolved impulses/consciousness of the film's director/writer. It unintentionally shows the LACK of awareness that a truly evolved, deeply aware character should have and be tormented about in order to deserve audience empathy or sympathy OR the lack of which is used to serve as a cautionary tale to the audience. But this film fails on either level in that regard.The fact that Cal, the main character (very much an ANTagonist, not a protagonist in the true sense of the word), has no empathy for anyone, especially those most deserving of it (which does NOT include him) and that he has such overblown, entitled, self-pitying, whiney sympathy only for himself, combined with the hallmark lack of remorse and no sense of guilt or awareness of his impact on others -- all converge in this film to make him the epitome of the self-involved, developmentally arrested, narcissistic sociopath -- somehow this is now the gold standard for males on film and in the world at this point and time. One of his counterpoints (James LeGros) states with a laser-true flash: "I bet you haven't done one good thing in life -- and I bet you won't". It captures the absolute essence of the Cal character. Something the other characters he bulldozes over in the film seem to realize fairly quickly despite the director having stacked the deck to manipulate sympathy for Cal. That is a testament to the supporting cast's talent and skills.Cal's eventual 'return' has nothing to do with character development, transformation or evolution of consciousness. It has only to do with the ultimate capitulation that until something better comes along, he may as well be back in his comfy cozy status quo of entitled enablement where the living is easy and no one will demand that he grow up--something of which he is willfully incapable and uninterested in doing.The film could have been pointed and intentional about showing the traps and tragedies -- the devastating effects of this kind of lack of conscience/ consciousness, but it excuses and glorifies it instead -- in fact, it wallows in self-pity right along with the arrogant, selfish, emotionally stunted main character.(and it sure sent chills up my spine when thinking of the recent revelations about convicted murderer Scott Peterson).If you want to see Crudup at his most nuanced and full of an exciting potential that has never been truly realized in my opinion, see the underrated 'Inventing the Abbotts' ....