Movies in Brief: 'Last Stop for Paul'
The cable TV producer Neil Mandt ("Speed Dating," "Destination Truth") put together this grating, no-budget travelogue about two office buddies trotting the globe with a thermos full of a footloose friend's ashes. Mr. Mandt and his cameraman,Marc Carter, play Charlie and Cliff, just your average ugly Americans boozing and ogling their way through Jamaica, Chile, Greece, and finally Thailand. England, Egypt, and Russia round out the list via retold stories. Adventures and impromptu supporting players come in the form of locals and travelers encountered en route, and the stereotypical backpacker tales reduce travel to platitudes and getting lucky, drunk, stuck, or cheated.
Mr. Mandt (who also motormouths in voice-over narration) and company think their material is so funny or outrageous that they don't bother to perform (and they lack the charm to coast). The publicity notes for the film omit one point of production interest, and something of an explanation for the flimsy, jerry-built structure: Mr. Mandt has fashioned the movie out of his 19-episode online series, which took same title. That's evidence of a kind of resourcefulness, but YouTube fans might prefer to see other online hijinks than "Last Stop" brought to theaters (or none at all).
In an earlier age, inviting someone to your house to see a slide show of your vacation was a byword for banality no matter where you'd gone. "Last Stop for Paul," which opens Friday at the Two Boots Pioneer Theater, fits sunsets, sand, and ruins into frame whenever possible in pursuit of digital postcards, and caps the travels with some hasty, sappy romance. But exploits such as a night in a shoe-box jail or a Thai beach blowout are probably more interesting when heard in an original context of beer-buzzed hostel-hopping than when acted out and packaged for sale.
