The End of the Tour (James Ponsoldt, 2015)

[Professor Wagstaff]

James Ponsoldt's David Foster Wallace biopic The End of the Tour

[mfunk9786]

I'm impressed by how good of a job Segel does with Wallace's verbal tics. As someone who read the book the film was based on and wasn't entirely choked up with it, but who finds Wallace's nonfiction, persona, and life story quite interesting, I'm more convinced than I was before seeing this trailer that it's going to be something worth seeing.

[mfunk9786]

This really didn't work for me. David Foster Wallace is such an interesting figurehead of early adulthood disappointment and malaise, but the film really makes some big leaps - assuming that those seeing it have any familiarity with the cult around Wallace, or with Wallace himself. The entire film is about him being interviewed, so presenting that without any information outside of the fact that he was on a book tour for something he wrote that was very acclaimed drains The End of the Tour of any recognizable context or way in. Even if you've got a working knowledge of Wallace, someone whose appeal as an author and speaker was his ability to ruminate on just about any topic with creativity and life-affirming certainty, the conversations that take place in this film aren't necessary sparkling examples of that because of how uncomfortable the Lipsky character was - it was like watching David Foster Wallace have a conversation with a trembling ball of sweat.

Speaking of said trembling ball - I can't think of many actors who went from interesting screen presence to "oh god, HE's in this?!" faster than Jesse Eisenberg. He just doesn't feel right for this, lacking in sincerity or any sort of insight into what makes the Lipsky character as he exists in the world of the film so uncomfortable. The jealousy angle is his bread and butter, but whenever Eisenberg is trying to convey sincerity (as he does to bookend the film, etc), he seems over-matched playing off of Jason Segel, who has that warm but very serious and thoughtful Wallace persona down to a T.

I just don't see what most critics are seeing here. You would be approximately a hundred times better off using your ticket money to buy the abridged audiobook recording of Consider the Lobster and hearing Wallace read some of his own words. Those are much more consequential and interesting ones than those that were on those interview tapes and appropriated into this film, I'm sad to say.