The classic road picture features two guys who travel to an exotic destination and indulge themselves to the fullest. This is what basically happens in Land Ho!, which unfolds against the backdrop of Iceland’s stark volcanic landscape.
The protagonists, Mitch (Early Lynn Nelson) and Colin (Paul Eenhoorn), are brothers-in-law who drifted apart after their respective marriages ended through divorce and death. They haven’t seen in each other in years, but now they’re about to embark on a grand holiday adventure in Iceland, of all places.
They are polar opposites. Mitch, a retired American doctor, is outgoing, gregarious and fun-loving, an incessant talker. Colin, a retired French horn player and an Australian by birth, is reserved and inhibited.
Given their vastly different personalities, one wonders how the pair will get along so far from home. Not to worry. The co-directors and co-writers, Martha Stephens and Aaron Katz, turn Land Ho!, which opens in Toronto on Aug. 8, into an enjoyable romp.
Although they’re poles apart, Mitch and Colin are in the same boat, so to speak. They’re single and lonely, their best years behind them. Mitch, however, is upbeat and still curious. “I look for the silver lining,” he says in a Southern drawl. “You’ve got to get on with your life.”
Being far more affluent than Colin, Mitch pays for their first-class airplane tickets to Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital, and for their land costs as well. He looks forward to the hot springs, the lobster meals and the “broads.” By contrast, Colin is circumspect, letting Mitch whip up enthusiasm for the trip.
As they explore Reykjavik, a bleak and functional city that sits under a leaden sky, they swap stories about their lives. Mitch does most of the talking, and the dialogue is sharp and snappy.
Mitch is really an overgrown adolescent. He smokes a locally purchased joint and he fantasizes about voluptuous women. After admiring a nude painting in an art gallery, he likens her nipples to a “wild strawberry.”
Having been advised that his much younger cousin, Ellen (Karrie Crouse), and her friend, Janet (Elizabeth McKee), plan to stop over in Iceland briefly on their way back to the United States, Mitch picks them up at the airport. He treats Ellen and Janet, PhD students in native northern cultures and Jewish mysticism respectively, kindly and generously.
Following their departure, Mitch and Colin set out in a Hummer jeep for the countryside. This segment of the movie is almost like a travelogue. They admire a waterfall, a lighthouse on a promontory and a geyser, and they wallow in the warm waters of a spring. All the while, they chat and reminisce as Colin loosens up and Mitch enjoys himself. “I’m not dead yet,” he exults in a voluble expression of joie de vivre.
At times, Land Ho! runs out of steam and suffers from repetitiveness, but it never bogs down for too long. It’s a film suffused with joy and humor, and the backdrops of craggy mountains and inhospitable rocky plains are scenically arresting.
The star attraction, though, is Nelson, a surgeon off-screen and a fine actor otherwise. He holds it all together in a virtuoso performance, turning Land Ho! into a pleasurable experience.