| Product: |
Long Way Round - Ewan McGregor, Charley Boorman |
| Date: |
01/08/08 (296 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Good fun, nice guys..
Disadvantages: A little contrived..
The 19,000 mile trip in question is not the distance you need to travel around Ewan McGregor's head these days but a motorbike journey he, his best mate Charley Boorman and what felt like a 200 back-up team, trail blazed from London to NY in the year of 2004.
Ewan and Charlie became firm friends after meeting on the set of the highly rated film, The Emerald Forest (1985), directed by Charley's famous dad Peter Borman, his son clearly cast because of. Charley, of course, is an atrocious actor and it's unclear if he has worked since. This is his only film listed in the Radio Times film book. But he knows Ewan, they both like bikes, and his dad is very rich so here he is riding around the world with Obi Wan Kenobi.
The film is in documentary form, first following the team getting things organized for the trip and the actors getting in shape for the demands to come with the occasional sit up, inoculation and map reading lesson. Two episodes of the six spent on this trivial aspect are perhaps one too many, their fragrant wives and kids also thrust in front of the camera like the FA Cup. Yes we know your risking your perfect lives to get all oily, dusty and dangerous with normal people. But it's a tough trip as they and the boys back up crew intend to ride from London to New York on specially built bikes. The only time they are not on the bikes is when they keep falling off onto jagged rocks and when they will fly from the most eastern coast of Russia to Alaska, the challenge of riding the occasionally iced over Bering Straight one risk to far, especially with post production of the Attacks of the Clones still being cut together by George Lucas at the time. George likes to re-shoot scenes in search of perfection. If ever you needed Edward Scissor hands it's was for the final cut of that movie! I would like to remind Ewan and Charley that Jeremy Clarkson and the little fella did the trip on Top Gear in a couple of much heavier 4x4s.
This was, of course, filmed along time before the boy's trip down the spine of Africa, 'Long Way Around', the precursor to 'Long Way Down'. In fact I watched that film first and the only reason I got into the repeats of this on TV. Presumably the next bike adventure will be a trip down the Americas in a few years from now called 'Your Careers a Long Way Down'... I think its fair to say Ewans film career has peaked and his boyish good looks and 'cheeky chappy' approach can only last so long. He's a likeable guy, don't get me wrong, but he does like to mug to camera at every opportunity in these documentaries. The goggle eyed ogre that is Charlie Boorman, on the other hand, can only make him look good on screen.
The third and forth episodes were the boys on the road, sweeping through Benelux and Germany, the hot and flat tarmac smoothing them towards the perils of the dirt tracks to come in the old Eastern Europe, every border guard and cop demanding an autograph or a bribe. When they hit Russia things started to get very eclectic, Ewan and Charlie put up in a very swanky hotel, care of the Ukrainian mafia no less. There were AK47s on the dinner table and grenades in the fruit bowl. But that's what traveling is all about and the team appreciated the absurdity of it. I suspect Luke Sky walkers dad as light saber can't deflect bullets.
Kazakhstan and Mongolia were next up, the bumps and ruts really beating up the bikes on the gravel roads. The Kazakhstan cops and people were very courteous, determined to escort the team through their mountainous and surprisingly green country for every mile. Mongolia was a different kettle of fish altogether, baron and rocky like the moons of the Dagabar System (Empire Strikes Back!), the boys toppling off the bikes more times than a drunken page three girl does the Soho pavement. The specially built rough terrain bikes to the people there were like the pods from War of the Worlds, frightened horseman not sticking around to talk to Ewan and Charley in their expensive decaled leathers, Boormans alien like looks scoring them back into the wilderness. We come in peace.
To justify the boys jolly a bit of charity work is thrown into the mix and Ewan and Charley put on their charity faces as young children claw at him with big smiling faces. We also have the crew creeping into the film at this point, which I'm never comfortable with on documentaries, as the thing can be contrived around personalities and not the scenery and experience. I did like the mix of travelogue and human interest here, a star out of his comfort zone, but at times it felt that wasn't the case and Ewan and Charley could just be on location for a movie.
One of the funniest bits in the sequel the boys did when they biked own Africa was the diversion through Tunisia, clearly suggested by Ewan so he could stroll through the Star Wars set that is situated there as a tourists attraction. When the two rolled up on their bikes, know one seemed to recognize him, even though there was poster of him on the tourist office walls. These guys were clearly, like the rest of us, not Phantom Menace fans. Maybe the producers did edit out people making the double-take on set but I did chuckle, the boy's ego never recovering. And, that if we are honest, is the point of these two films-seeing star being humbled by this beautiful world we live in where two thirds of the population don't have running water, let alone a DVD player to watch Young Adam.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Way_Roun d
Summary: Hey look, its Ewan!
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