For all it is in the end, “Around the Bend” sure is trite, cheesy, and cliché, but it’s also entertaining and most of the time it’s hard to beat the combined talents of people like Michael Caine, Josh Lucas, and the ubiquitous Christopher Walken, respectively. In the spirit of films like “Five Easy Pieces” and “Diamonds”, we’re given the usual trifecta generational clashing between father, son, and grandson as they venture out on the open road to fulfill a request courtesy of their great grandfather (cue Caine). So we have this sometimes beautiful road flick involving these actors as they discover each other while being forced to stop at every KFC’s that is drawn out for them on the map left behind by Henry after his death. Though the whole road trip concept is tired, what the plot does with it is a rather original twist by having these three generations of men bond while at a fast food restaurant and occasionally coming across an oddball here or there.
Josh Lucas gives a great performance as he always does as the always skeptic sometimes difficult Jason who has a checkered past but insists on caring for the people he loves in spite of the troubles he experiences, and as for Walken, he really manages to hold his own and in many ways comes out on top in his performance. It’s tough to not like anything that man does, and he really does give a great performance here. Lucas and Walken have great chemistry as a father and son with a past between them though they prefer not to fully acknowledge it, and watching these two on-screen together tangling with one another really becomes something of an incentive when considering checking this out, and it pays off well. Lucas and Walken are great together and the film in the second half becomes much more deeper than a film about a simple road trip and inevitably morphs in to a deeper portrait of inner demons.
In the end, I really wish I’d have liked this more than I did. I mean we have all the ingredients for a potentially great film with Walken and the lot, but it none of it ever results in to anything remotely worth of an excellent film, but just ends up being mediocre which was rather daunting when I was able to gloss over the film again and again. What’s sad is Michael Caine is wasted here as a basically one note character whose idea of a swanky restaurant is KFC. But the writing is so focused on turning him in to an eccentric instead of a three -dimensional person, that we’re reduced to many rather ridiculous scenes. His fondness for KFC, and his quirky behavior is all just so forced. And even when he dies it’s extremely cheesy as he just writes out this request in the KFC bags (the most blatant product placement of all time) and he dies in a KFC? Come on, now.
I’ve never seen anything so cheesy in movies before (Then, the grandfather dies at the right time, and so does his dog? How does that work?). Most of the film requires for a lot of resistance to many hokey moments such as the grandson dancing in the end which was ultimately an incredibly hokey end to a film that didn’t really need such a device. While it has the potential, it basically ruins it for all its worth with immense melodrama, and clichés. While it can be cliché, trite, hokey and incredibly corny, “Around the Bend” is essentially watchable in spite of its immense flaws simply for its great performances and generally involving situations.