![[box cover]](../../reviewimgs/d/daytrippers.jpg)
The Daytrippers
There's a glorious moment in The Daytrippers, Greg Mottola's road comedy from early 1996, as the happily married Eliza D'Amico is at a rooftop party gazing at her husband (Stanley Tucci), who doesn't know she's there. She's been looking for him all day, all over Manhattan, along with the rest of her family, because she suspects he's having an affair with someone named Sandy. The pleasure on her face as she watches her husband candidly enjoying himself is luminous. Of course, everything turns to merde about five seconds later, but for those first few moments, as the light catches her and the wind gently rifles her hair, she is gloriously happy and glorious to look at. And she's not the only luminous woman in the film. There is also Parker Posey, who plays her sister Jo, the representative of darkness and experience to Eliza's blond innocence. She's having man trouble too. Her boyfriend (Liev Schreiber) is a failed novelist who gets along better with Jo's parents, or at least her domineering, high-maintainence mother (Anne Meara) than with her. In the family's episodic, Odeyssean journey, both daughters learn new things, make changes, confront conflict — and help their dad momentarily free himself from mom's vile henpecking. The Daytrippers is a delightful well-observed movie, but small in its scope and effects. The film only made about $2 million upon its release, which probably explains its delay in conversion to DVD, as well as its minimal extras; yet it is a perfect kind of movie for the intimate ambiance of one's living room. Good anamorphic transfer (1.85:1), Dolby 2.0 Surround. Trailer, some cast-and-crew documentation. Keep-case.
—D.K. Holm
