The Daytrippers

Bomb Rating: 

The most violent reactions to this movie will undoubtedly come from those who suddenly realize how much they hate its main characters.

By the time "The Daytrippers" is over, you'll be so acutely aware of the thin line between hip and unending torture that you'll be able to sniff out lousy independent films with the efficiency of a police dog in a crack house.

Hip is being able to conduct an effective, amusing conversation in a station wagon filled with five adults. Unending torture is making those five adults New Yorkers and letting the conversations drag on to the point where you begin scanning the theater for old ladies to kick in the back of the head because you suspect they might sound something like Anne Meara and if you ever hear that whiny voice again you might rip out your own eyeballs.

Meara plays the bossy mother of Eliza (Hope Davis) and Jo (Parker Posey). They all get in a car along with their dad (Pat McNamara) and Jo's strange boyfriend, Carl (Liev Schreiber), in search of Eliza's husband, Louis (Stanley Tucci), whom they suspect of having an affair because Eliza finds a letter in a drawer that seems slightly suspicious.

Director Greg Mottola tries to make cute for a couple hours with this odd gang. The most violent reactions to this movie will undoubtedly come from those who suddenly realize how much they hate its main characters. For some, that might take an hour, for others, five minutes will do. At best though, that leaves an hour of sheer agony and angst to be endured.

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