Film Review: The Discoverers

I know I mentioned in a previous review that I like stories of discovery.  I also have said in the past that I tend to enjoy films about teachers and writers.

Well, this film is sort of an exception to that.  Maybe it's because I saw Freedom Writers the night before and the scenes of jaded teachers and faculty tend to grate on me.  Coming from that film and seeing the opening sequence in which college professor - and Lewis and Clark aficionado - Lewis is told that teaching his students isn't important, only irked me a tad bit further

And then there are his kids who in some ways remind me of George Clooney and the younger cast in the Descendents (read my review).  Another film I didn't love.

I think my problem is that we've gone down this road before.  We've seen these kind of predictable plots.  They key in these films should be how they get there.  To paraphrase Lau Tsu, "It's the journey, not the destination."  And yet neither of these films work hard enough on the journey for my taste.

The highlights:

1) Lewis' daughter gets her period while they're out in the wilderness, cut off from civilization.  That whole situation and how they handled it is one of two top moments in the film.  I often think about those kind of inconveniences in disaster films.  People isolated in the middle of nowhere.  What does a woman do when it's that time of the month?

2) The ending.  I won't give it away, but while it's a slight let-down, it still was a nice way to close the film.

Additional treat:  The much underrated Stuart Margolin as Lewis' father, Stanley.

It's a comedy lacking in true comedic moments (save for the first highlight mentioned above), but maybe it will resonate more with others than it did me.


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