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Don't Believe the Hype

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Richard Dreyfuss and Judy Davis shine in this contemporary story of a couple whose marriage has literally gone astray, part in fact due to the infidelity of both partners and the fact that their eldest son was killed in a car accident 8 years before.Davis looks like she has really gone through the ringer here. As the emotionally distraught, she depicts an emotional and psychological hang-up which is certainly memorable. She is equally matched by Dreyfuss, who also pulls no punches as the husband.They plan to end their marriage by going out to Los Angeles to attend the wedding of their surviving son and making important stops along the way. These stops are memorable as they depict the sudden demise of the co-writer, wittingly played by director Paul Mazursky. There is also the daughter, not married, pregnant girl who has broken up with the baby's father to only start a new relationship with a basketball player.This is definitely a poignant story brought to the screen by great performances as well as a sharp dialogue.The musical score is wonderful here.

As I was watching this movie, I found myself struck by what seemed to be a number of similarities with the movie "Ordinary People." Like the story in that movie, Richard Dreyfuss and Judy Davis play a couple whose marriage is falling apart as they deal with the accidental death of their son a number of years before. "Coast To Coast," however is not as good as "Ordinary People," although it's not a bad movie at all and while it definitely didn't captivate me, it definitely did pull me in and keep me interested."Coast To Coast" is an often heavy movie, although the heaviness is broken up somewhat by rather low-key comedy, which is largely introduced by making Dreyfuss' character of Barnaby Pierce a comedy writer. Essentially, Barnaby and Maxine (Davis) set off from their home in Connecticut to attend their surviving son's wedding in Los Angeles. (In another scene strikingly similar to "Ordinary People" the surviving son is having problems of his own dealing with his brother's death, as they were in the car together when the accident occurred.) Along the way, Barnaby and Maxine have encounters with several old friends and acquaintances, all of whom seem to have lives even more dysfunctional than theirs. The most notable (to me) of those encounters was with one of Maxine's former professors (played by Maximilian Schell) who has married a young bombshell, but whose ex-wife still lives in the house, coming out only at night and never interacting with the ex-husband. Essentially the central part of the movie is the trip to Denver, when Maxine has a rather difficult encounter with an old flame, played by Fred Ward.Somehow, any real suspense is lacking here. I never had any doubt that Barnaby and Maxine would eventually reconcile, and that reconciliation is certainly hinted at by the last scene of the movie.The performances of Dreyfuss and Davis were the highlights here. Dreyfuss is always excellent, and this was no exception. Davis I was unfamiliar with, having not seen any of her previous work, but she also did a very commendable job with her role. These performances pull a basically OK movie up another notch. "Coast To Coast" didn't blow me away, but on the strength of an interesting story, memorable characters and the above mentioned performances, I still give it a 7/10

Two splendid actors - Davis and Dreyfuss - doing nothing splendid or special with a predictable, trendiness-laden, and artificial Portentous-Moments-of-Life-Changing-Profundity script. I kept waiting for something to develop or to appear that wasn't bathetic, but no such luck. The scene in which Paul Mazurksy does an insipid and completely off-the-mark impression of Jerry Lewis is actually irrelevant and rather creepy...and not (warning: Spoiler) because Mazurksy's character dies with the Jerry Lewis fake Nutty Professor teeth in his mouth. Also, whoever styled (here I use that word advisedly) and colored Judy Davis's rat's nest hair ought to lose his or her beautician's credentials: not only was her coif awful, it's also just not the sort of hairdo worn by a very affluent, post-middle-aged Connecticut housewife - even is she is wed to a fast-becoming-a-has-been sit-com writer.

It was inspired casting in the pairing of Richard Dreyfuss and Judy Davis as Barnaby and Maxine Pierce, a middle-aged married couple on a trek by car from the East to the West coasts. The ostensible purpose of their auto trip is to attend their son's wedding in Los Angeles. At the same time, the couple is contemplating a divorce and is still in recovery from the death of one of their children many years ago. The film reaches for over-the-top comedy in the couple's cross-country reunion with old friends and lovers while simultaneously expressing a painful undercurrent with the couple's long struggle to recover from their personal tragedy.The film juggles the comedic and dramatic styles with uneven results. The best scenes are the comic escapades, such as the visit to Minneapolis where the parents greet their daughter (Selma Blair), who introduces them to her latest fiance (John Salley) and announces that she is carrying another man's child. When the banter is brisk and lively, Dreyfuss and Davis are in fine form, recalling Hepburn and Tracy in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?"But when the mood turns downbeat, the actors flounder with dramatic material that does not ring true to their characters. For example, it made no sense when the couple visited Denver and Davis' character Maxine was reunited with her ex-lover. There was even the suggestion that Maxine might remarry the Denver cop (Fred Ward) whose character is not only married, but is frighteningly abrasive. It was implausible that someone with the intelligence of Maxine would find any appeal in an unpleasant character with a hair-trigger temper. It was puzzling as well that the two adult children of Barnaby and Maxine seemed wiser than their world-weary parents and were all-too-ready to provide grief therapy. In any family system, those two children would need to deal with the loss of their sibling, just like their parents.The careful balancing of a comic style with a tragic undercurrent was achieved brilliantly in Edward Albee's play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", which deals a couple's presumed loss of a child while concurrently delivering the dark humor. "Coast to Coast" stretches, but falls substantially short of Albee's powerful style. In a single sequence in the L.A. portion of the film, Barnaby first insults his son's female boss in a hotel lobby; the boss subsequently forgives Barnaby unconditionally when she learns that he is the father of her employee; and, in the next scene, Barnaby is openly weeping in a restaurant, causing the other patrons to gawk at him. Are these scenes supposed to be funny or serious?The emotional roller coaster ride stretches credibility due to the weak dialogue, which, in this film, resembles slapdash sitcom writing. And it was especially disappointing in the film medium that there was not more footage of the colorful locations of the cross-country trip (other than a recurring map of U.S.A. shown to the viewer), as Barnaby and Maxine forge their way across the country. There was never a dull moment on this coast-to-coast trip. But the ride was bumpy and uneven.