This was originally written on Facebook as a post in talking about my favorite movies released in the U.S. in 1988.
As I’ve been writing these reviews, you might have noticed how I’ve tried to bring up the ways even movies I love may have issues in how they deal with issues that have come under higher scrutiny today, such as gender identity and sex. But those aren’t the only issues that may change the way you might view a work of art today. Consider, for example, the fact cities throughout the United States, and arguably the world, have become more homogenized, especially New York City. To bring in tourist dollars and out-of-town business, the Powers That Be in cities have driven out much of what gives these cities an identity in the first place – arts, local cuisine, small businesses – and replaced it with businesses that could be found anywhere. The attitude seems to be people who visit cities don’t want to experience what makes that city unique, they want to know where they can find a McDonald’s when they visit. To be sure, this isn’t a new attitude. The hero of Anne Tyler’s novel – and Lawrence Kasdan’s movie adaptation – The Accidental Tourist – which was published in 1985 (while the movie came out in 1988) writes travel books for people who hate to travel, and who are looking for where to get a McDonald’s in Paris, rather than where to get the best example of French food, Given the caveat I find that kind of attitude abhorrent, I must admit I still find The Accidental Tourist to be a wonderful novel and movie (Kasdan and Frank Galati wrote the screenplay).
The writer of those books in both the novel and the movie is Macon Leary (William Hurt), who makes a living at this. Macon really doesn’t like to travel, which, according to his publisher Julian (Bill Pullman), makes him ideal to write the books. Macon, however, is cut off from life in other ways, especially since his son Ethan was murdered at a shooting in a fast-food restaurant (Jim True played the role in flashback scenes, but they were cut from the movie). Leary’s been unable to express his grief or reach out to people, and it’s because of this his wife Sarah (Kathleen Turner) decides to leave him. Macon retreats even further into himself, especially when Edward, his dog (actually, he was Ethan’s), leaps onto Macon one day, causing him to fall down and break his leg. Because of this accident, Macon moves in with his sister Rose (Amy Wright), and his brothers Charles (Ed Begley Jr.) and Porter (David Ogden Stiers). Because Edward starts to act out towards not just Macon, but the others, Macon finds he needs to get a dog trainer, and reluctantly reaches out to Muriel Pritchett (Geena Davis), who works at an animal hospital (called Meow-Bow) that also boards animals (Macon left Edward there at the last minute when he had to go on a trip and the usual place didn’t take Edward), because she also trains dogs. While Muriel is able to train Edward to get him to be more well-behaved, she also gradually draws Macon out of his emotional shell, even though (or maybe especially because) she’s much more outgoing than he is.
When critic Nathan Rabin, then writing for the A.V. Club, reviewed Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown (my least favorite Crowe movie, though it did get better for me upon rewatch), he tagged the character Kirsten Dunst played in the movie, Claire, as a “Manic Pixie Dream Girl”. Rabin described this type of character as one who “exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” In other words, these characters – most often girls or, in some cases, women – exist solely to bring the lead male character out of their funk, or teach them life lessons, and, in general, make them better people, without having a life of their own. Muriel may seem like this at first – this type of character, it should be said, has been around in literature for a long time – but Tyler and Kasdan are much smarter than that. Muriel does have a life of her own – she has her own son, Alexander (Robert Gorman), who is a sickly boy (the novel goes into more detail as to what he’s allergic to, which is a lot), and is barely able to make ends meet. Not only that, but she makes it clear to Macon she’s not just there to help him; when Macon says they should transfer Alexander to a private school (he thinks Alexander doesn’t know how to subtract), Muriel wonders if that means Macon is going to pay for it, and tells him in no uncertain terms not to make any promises he can’t keep, especially if he doesn’t plan to stick around. That comes into play even more when Macon runs into Sarah again, and it’s clear they still have feelings for each other.
There’s a review quote on the inside back cover of my copy of Tyler’s novel that reads, “(Tyler’s) second-greatest gift is tolerance. Her greatest gift is love…” To me, that’s a good summation of Tyler’s gifts as a novelist. While she can sometimes go overboard on the quirks, as well as in portraying people too set in their ways, at her best, she makes those characters come to life, and always brings out the real emotions underneath. Tyler treats the characters in a comic way – the Learys all play a card game called Vaccination, with rules no one but them seem to know; they also can’t seem to go anywhere without getting lost – but she’s able to make us laugh with the characters, rather than at them (other than this novel, my favorites she’s written are Digging to America and Saint Maybe). Kasdan may have had to cut out a lot in adapting Tyler’s novel (deleted scenes can be found on the DVD), but he retains the spirit of it. A scene early in the movie (which is in the novel, though later in it) shows Macon, while on the plane, running into a man (Bradley Mott) who, as it happens, uses Leary’s books as a guide not just to travel, but to life, and again, we laugh with Leary here, not at him. Of course, Kasdan, along with his usual collaborators – cinematographer John Bailey and editor Carol Littleton – also accomplish visually what Tyler did in writing, especially near the end, where Macon encounters a boy in Paris (where he’s on a trip) who resembles Ethan. Kasdan is able to show us this just from the way Macon looks at the boy.
Of course, Kasdan also gets help from the actors. Hurt makes himself shrunken and paler than usual as Macon. You truly believe he’s cut himself off (in contrary to the cynicism he showed in The Big Chill and his free-spirited nature in Children of a Lesser God), and he makes the process in which Macon learns to eventually engage with the world again seem natural. Turner, better known for playing either femme fatale roles (Body Heat, Prizzi’s Honor) or characters caught up in adventures (Romancing the Stone and its sequel), shows a lot more to her in playing the grief-stricken Sarah, though it turns out she’s also got more steel in her than you think, especially when she comes out to take over for Macon when he hurts his back. Pullman was best known at the time for comic roles in movies like Ruthless People and Spaceballs, but while he has his comic side here as well – when he finds out Rose had been looking for the right envelope to mail him Macon’s latest work, Julian dubs it the “Macon Leary 9 by 12 envelope crisis” – he shows a lot of depth, especially in the scenes where he’s with Rose. And Wright, Begley, and Stiers are believable as siblings who are comfortable with each other. But it’s Davis who makes the movie work as well as it does. Muriel could have easily just have been a collection of quirks, but Davis makes her real by underplaying. She also does a lot with her face, especially in the scene where Macon comes over to tell her he can’t see her and ends up finally opening up about Ethan; she just leads him inside, and with a look, we can see the empathy and sadness in her eyes. It’s also there in the end, when Muriel, leaving Paris (she’s followed Macon there, without his wanting her there), sees Macon, and the way she reacts shows you why she deserved to win an Oscar for her performance (even if you think it was for the wrong category). The scenes where Macon looks for American food abroad still make me wince (though there aren’t as many in the movie as were in the novel), but The Accidental Tourist remains, for me, a wonderful movie because of the care and affection for the characters.
