Is it a modern classic? I think so. Lawrence Kasdan’s best movie embraces characters often lampooned or dismissed, or stereotyped as kooks — introverts, extroverts, people trying to make personal connections and those trying to avoid them. William Hurt finds his best role and Geena Davis won an Oscar for hers; thirty years later the entire cast feel like beloved friends.
The Accidental Tourist
Blu-ray
The Warner Archive Collection
1988 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 121 min. / Street Date May 8, 2017 / Available from the The Warner Archive Collection Movies Store 29.95
Starring: William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, Geena Davis, Amy Wright, David Ogden Stiers, Ed Begley Jr., Bill Pullman.
Cinematography: John Bailey
Production Designer: Bo Welch
Film Editor: Carol Littleton
Original Music: John Williams
Written by Frank Galatiand Lawrence Kasdan
from the book by Anne Tyler
Produced by Phyllis Carlyle, Michael Grillo, Lawrence Kasdan, John Malkovich, Charles Okun
Directed by Lawrence Kasdan
Some of my favorite movies...
The Accidental Tourist
Blu-ray
The Warner Archive Collection
1988 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 121 min. / Street Date May 8, 2017 / Available from the The Warner Archive Collection Movies Store 29.95
Starring: William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, Geena Davis, Amy Wright, David Ogden Stiers, Ed Begley Jr., Bill Pullman.
Cinematography: John Bailey
Production Designer: Bo Welch
Film Editor: Carol Littleton
Original Music: John Williams
Written by Frank Galatiand Lawrence Kasdan
from the book by Anne Tyler
Produced by Phyllis Carlyle, Michael Grillo, Lawrence Kasdan, John Malkovich, Charles Okun
Directed by Lawrence Kasdan
Some of my favorite movies...
- 5/2/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
In "Mumford", writer-director Lawrence Kasdan has a film Frank Capra could have made were he alive today. In fact, Kasdan hasn't even tried to update Capra: Small-town America looks as good as ever, people are mostly nice and have the ability to work through their problems and even the richest man in town is a nice guy who simply needs to meet a nice girl. About the only change Kasdan has made to "Capracorn" is that the kindly town doctor everyone trusts is a shrink named Mumford.
This Touchstone film is like a pitcher with a sneaky fastball and deceptive curve: It may not look like the staff ace, but it might wind up winning more games than anyone expects. With the right marketing, the feel-good comedy could give Buena Vista a winning season. It's mostly a question of how much niceness today's audiences can stand.
Essentially, Kasdan accepts the notion that a psychologist is really just a person who listens well. Consequently, Dr. Mumford (Loren Dean), a good listener who arrived in a former logging town also named Mumford only four months earlier, has more patients than he can handle.
Henry Pruitt Taylor Vince) consults Mumford about his overactive fantasy life, which looks exactly like a black-and-white B movie. Althea (Mary McDonnell) comes to him about her compulsive mail-order shopping, which makes a poor substitute for her broken-down marriage to workaholic Jeremy (Ted Danson). Skip (Jason Lee), a skateboarding computer billionaire, sees the Doc outside his office -- he can't let shareholders know the company founder is seeing a shrink -- to talk about his loneliness. Nessa (Zooey Deschanel) is a pro bono patient who needs to overcome her addictions to sex, cigarettes and drugs.
Yes, the good doctor's practice is going quite well until a weary Sofie (Hope Davis) barely makes it through his door complaining of chronic fatigue syndrome. Her presence challenges Mumford with an ethical dilemma -- he realizes he is about to fall in love with a patient.
But the viewer has witnessed several other ethical lapses along the way, from Mumford's irregular therapies to his blithe willingness to discuss one patient's problems in front of another. So it comes as little surprise when the viewer learns the good doctor is faking everything, from his diploma to his license. All he is is a good listener -- and that's all anybody really needs, at least in this movie.
That's where troubles may arise for some viewers. "Mumford" sometimes feels as fake as the doctor's diploma. Mumford is a movie town peopled by movie characters with easily solved movie problems. One wonders how the psychologist's benign techniques would work if someone suffering from paranoid schizophrenia showed up at his door. One might even wonder why nearly everyone in the unusually strife-free town goes to a shrink in the first place. That's not normal small-town behavior.
The expectation that Kasdan has some twist up his sleeve or a deeper purpose is dashed by the end, when everyone's problems get happily resolved in ways so neat and tidy that one cannot imagine another scene after "The End" hits the screen.
In "Mumford", Kasdan, not unlike his character Henry, has indulged in his own fantasy, one of the perfect town in which anyone would want to live.
Dean is the right choice for the amiable doctor. His is a recessive presence on-screen, with the ability to pull good scenes from fellow actors. He moves quietly through the movie being whatever person the other characters need him to be.
Alfre Woodard helps anchor "Mumford" in what little reality to which it can lay claim with her direct gaze and steady manner as the doctor's favorite cafe owner and landlord.
Kasdan's production team has neatly concocted the perfect small town from choice locations in Northern California's wine country. The only curiosity is that the director and cinematographer Ericson Core chose to shoot so many hard-eyed close-ups of the actors, a style somewhat at odds with the whimsical comedy.
MUMFORD
Buena Vista Pictures
Touchstone Pictures
Credits: Producers: Charles Okun, Lawrence Kasdan; Screenwriter-director: Lawrence Kasdan; Director of photography: Ericson Core; Production designer: Jon Hutman; Music: James Newton Howard; Costume designer: Colleen Atwood; Editors: Carol Littleton, William Steinkamp. Cast: Mumford: Loren Dean; Sofie Crisp: Hope Davis; Skip Skiperton: Jason Lee; Lily: Alfre Woodard; Jeremy Brockett: Ted Danson; Althea Brockett: Mary McDonnell; Henry Follett: Pruitt Taylor Vince; Nessa Watkins: Zooey Deschanel; Lionel Dillard: Martin Short; Dr. Ernest Delbanco: David Paymer; Dr. Phyllis Sheeler: Jane Adams. MPAA rating: R. Color/stereo. Running time -- 96 minutes.
This Touchstone film is like a pitcher with a sneaky fastball and deceptive curve: It may not look like the staff ace, but it might wind up winning more games than anyone expects. With the right marketing, the feel-good comedy could give Buena Vista a winning season. It's mostly a question of how much niceness today's audiences can stand.
Essentially, Kasdan accepts the notion that a psychologist is really just a person who listens well. Consequently, Dr. Mumford (Loren Dean), a good listener who arrived in a former logging town also named Mumford only four months earlier, has more patients than he can handle.
Henry Pruitt Taylor Vince) consults Mumford about his overactive fantasy life, which looks exactly like a black-and-white B movie. Althea (Mary McDonnell) comes to him about her compulsive mail-order shopping, which makes a poor substitute for her broken-down marriage to workaholic Jeremy (Ted Danson). Skip (Jason Lee), a skateboarding computer billionaire, sees the Doc outside his office -- he can't let shareholders know the company founder is seeing a shrink -- to talk about his loneliness. Nessa (Zooey Deschanel) is a pro bono patient who needs to overcome her addictions to sex, cigarettes and drugs.
Yes, the good doctor's practice is going quite well until a weary Sofie (Hope Davis) barely makes it through his door complaining of chronic fatigue syndrome. Her presence challenges Mumford with an ethical dilemma -- he realizes he is about to fall in love with a patient.
But the viewer has witnessed several other ethical lapses along the way, from Mumford's irregular therapies to his blithe willingness to discuss one patient's problems in front of another. So it comes as little surprise when the viewer learns the good doctor is faking everything, from his diploma to his license. All he is is a good listener -- and that's all anybody really needs, at least in this movie.
That's where troubles may arise for some viewers. "Mumford" sometimes feels as fake as the doctor's diploma. Mumford is a movie town peopled by movie characters with easily solved movie problems. One wonders how the psychologist's benign techniques would work if someone suffering from paranoid schizophrenia showed up at his door. One might even wonder why nearly everyone in the unusually strife-free town goes to a shrink in the first place. That's not normal small-town behavior.
The expectation that Kasdan has some twist up his sleeve or a deeper purpose is dashed by the end, when everyone's problems get happily resolved in ways so neat and tidy that one cannot imagine another scene after "The End" hits the screen.
In "Mumford", Kasdan, not unlike his character Henry, has indulged in his own fantasy, one of the perfect town in which anyone would want to live.
Dean is the right choice for the amiable doctor. His is a recessive presence on-screen, with the ability to pull good scenes from fellow actors. He moves quietly through the movie being whatever person the other characters need him to be.
Alfre Woodard helps anchor "Mumford" in what little reality to which it can lay claim with her direct gaze and steady manner as the doctor's favorite cafe owner and landlord.
Kasdan's production team has neatly concocted the perfect small town from choice locations in Northern California's wine country. The only curiosity is that the director and cinematographer Ericson Core chose to shoot so many hard-eyed close-ups of the actors, a style somewhat at odds with the whimsical comedy.
MUMFORD
Buena Vista Pictures
Touchstone Pictures
Credits: Producers: Charles Okun, Lawrence Kasdan; Screenwriter-director: Lawrence Kasdan; Director of photography: Ericson Core; Production designer: Jon Hutman; Music: James Newton Howard; Costume designer: Colleen Atwood; Editors: Carol Littleton, William Steinkamp. Cast: Mumford: Loren Dean; Sofie Crisp: Hope Davis; Skip Skiperton: Jason Lee; Lily: Alfre Woodard; Jeremy Brockett: Ted Danson; Althea Brockett: Mary McDonnell; Henry Follett: Pruitt Taylor Vince; Nessa Watkins: Zooey Deschanel; Lionel Dillard: Martin Short; Dr. Ernest Delbanco: David Paymer; Dr. Phyllis Sheeler: Jane Adams. MPAA rating: R. Color/stereo. Running time -- 96 minutes.
- 9/14/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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