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Rating: 4 out of 5
I recently booked my first vacation since 2017. I am going to Paris and London for two whole weeks. Yayyyyy!!! I am looking forward to this trip and vacation. I have all the sights I want to see and trying to think of all the food I want to eat. I am going to really be a tourist on this trip. The primary thing I am going to do is relax and reflect on the journey I went through to get to this point. I started planning my trip 5 years ago. I went through many ups and downs, but this is my present to myself for all the growth that I went through.
Recently, I picked up the Accidental Tourist. I thought it would be a movie about traveling and somehow the person ended up in a new country to find love. The film was somewhat what I thought, but I wasn’t expecting many other things. Macon Leary (Hurt) is a travel writer known as the Accidental Tourist. He advises on the best ways to travel and gives expert knowledge of the best spots in many different countries. Macon has been going through life in an emotionless state after the murder of his son. Macon’s wife, Sarah (Turner), is also having trouble dealing with the loss and decides that the best is to split up. Sarah quickly bounces and moves out of the house, leaving Macon and the dog alone. By chance, Macon decides to leave his dog at a pet hotel and meets Muriel (Davis), an eccentric, outgoing woman. After a few flirtatious attempts, Macon and Muriel begin a relationship. Macon soon starts the grieving process and begins to accept his loss. Life is good until Sarah comes back wanting to give their marriage another try. Macon is forced to make a life-altering decision.
I can’t figure out if I want to start with the story or the characters. I guess I’ll start with the story. The story is about love, grief, and taking your own journey. The film starts off really well with the main character Macon, a Baltimore writer of travel guides, detailing what he likes and doesn’t like about traveling. You get a crash course on how to pack and what seat you should have on a plane. Even though traveling is throughout the film, it is not the central theme for the entire movie.
The central theme is grief and having a process of dealing with that grief. Macon and his wife, Sarah, marriage has straight up gone to shit. Their two-year-old son was murdered or killed. With a reserved personality, Macon seems fine, but Sarah can’t deal with it and decides to dip on Macon and the dog. Macon soon realizes how alone he is. He tries to make do until he meets Muriel. Macon realizes that he hasn’t grieved enough over his son. That his mood and personality have held him back. He realizes that he is in a routine that Muriel completely upends with her son.
This brings me to the second theme, which is love. I have to give it to Muriel; homegirl saw Macon and was really feeling him. Homegirl came on HARD on Macon, and dude didn’t even realize it until she said something. At first, the relationship was awkward because Muriel was really forward and spoke her mind. When training Macon’s dog, she whips it around and shows it who is boss. Homegirl plays no games when training dogs, and it works. She seems to have that same way when she is working with Macon in love. She really didn’t hold anything back with her flirting. I had to give it to her; she showed great confidence. When Macon opened up to her, their relationship blossomed. Macon became somewhat of a father figure to her son. Macon even moves in with Muriel and seems genuinely happy. As you know, drama is never too far away, and it becomes really heated when Sarah returns. Really quick, I find it creepy that Muriel showed up on a flight to Paris with Macon and tried to spend time with him. It was being desperate to the fullest.
Another love story is with Macon’s sister, Rose, and his editor, Julian. When Julian sees Rose, it is love at first sight. Homeboy becomes smitten with the sister and always asks questions about her. When Rose cooks Thanksgiving dinner, it is a scene to watch because you think she might kill everyone. Julian mans up for love and eats the dinner. Rose and Julian get married and seem happy until Julian realizes that Rose stays over with her brothers because they can’t fend for themselves. It wasn’t until Julian gave Rose a job that they became happy.
The final theme of this film is acceptance. Macon couldn’t accept his son’s death or his true feelings for Muriel. When Sarah comes back from her however months hiatus, she rolls back in and sleeps with Macon like she never left. Sarah seemed to have moved on with her son’s death and liked to order Macon around. Conversely, Macon needs a lot more time, and when he realizes that Muriel is his path to growth and acceptance, he drops Sarah.
As far as the acting goes, I must admit that I was highly impressed. First, William Hurt as Macon Leary did an excellent job. He was this stoic person with a monotone voice. When he was around his brothers, they all seemed the same exact person. Hurt played Macon as a boring person with one of the best jobs. Yet, underneath it all, he was a broken man who lost his child and never really grieved.
I want to give major props to Geena Davis as Muriel Pritchett. Davis made this film enjoyable to watch, and she won the Academy Award for it. As Muriel, homegirl was forward, spoke her mind, and trained that dog better than Cesar Millan. She also was a mom that hustled for her sickly son. I wasn’t expecting Davis to do such a fantastic job.
Kathleen Turner as Sarah Leary was also really good. I wouldn’t say this was her best work, but she made an impact. As Sarah, she seemed loving until she dipped out. When she returned, I thought she was trifling, but she had to grieve alone. She was also pretty controlling, and something about Turner is fun to watch.
The Accidental Tourist is an interesting and surprising film for me. I wasn’t expecting the story and the acting. The story is about grief and acceptance after a death. Davis was fun to watch as the eccentric Muriel, while Hurt was a monotone traveler. Watch this film and give it a chance.
