Movie review by Greg Carlson

Co-directed and co-written by Martha Stephens (age 30) and Aaron Katz (age 32), “Land Ho!” premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics for theatrical distribution. A modest but picturesque blend of road movie, buddy comedy, and seize-the-day philosophizing, “Land Ho!” might be described as mumblecore for retirees, especially given the filmographies of its directors. Stephens and Katz may be youthful, but their decision to craft a story of two older men winding their way through Iceland on a pleasure vacation elevates the often couchbound parameters of mumblecore beyond the purely conversational.

“Land Ho!” is also the first movie released under the Gamechanger Films banner, a “for-profit film fund dedicated exclusively to financing narrative features directed by women,” and even though Stephens and Katz train their eyes on the fraternal bond of the two main male characters played by Paul Eenhoorn and Earl Lynn Nelson, the movie comments on the mysteries of male/female relationships amidst all the homosocial bonding. Eenhoorn’s Colin and Nelson’s Mitch were once married to sisters, and the men have remained friends beyond the lifespans of their marriages.

Colin’s reserved politeness positions him as the straight man to Mitch’s no-filter frankness. Much of the humor in “Land Ho!” is derived from the inappropriate comments uttered by Mitch, a libidinous epicure of the “dirty old man” variety. In one extended sequence that shapes a significant early section of the film, the fellows host Mitch’s young relative Ellen (Karrie Crouse, who previously worked with Katz in “Quiet City” and Stephens in “Passenger Pigeons” and “Pilgrim Song”) and her friend Janet (the warm and winsome Elizabeth McKee, who served as the production designer of “Pilgrim Song”). The filmmakers unravel the meeting of the unlikely quartet with enough tension to keep the audience slightly off-balance, and when Crouse and McKee exit the film, you’re sad to see them go.

While Katz and Stephens take complete advantage of the gorgeous Icelandic locations, the filmmakers weirdly, almost shockingly, overlook the residents. Nearly faceless rental car employees and restaurant staff are given a few inconsequential lines, and the only significant scene played by an Icelander involves a brief exchange in a club. Credited under his hip-hop moniker Emmsje Gauti, Gauti Peyr Masson plays Glow Stick Guy, a laidback fellow whose presumable altered state lends a humorous touch to a very short interaction that serves to set up a later visual callback to Glow Stick Guy’s chemiluminescent party favors.

Despite the dearth of native Icelanders, a few of the people met by Colin and Mitch on the road add some flavor to the proceedings. David Ehrlich’s claim that “The people Mitch and Colin encounter along the way are too perfectly premeditated, and the moments they share with them are never surprising” doesn’t account for Alice Olivia Clarke’s Nadine, a Canadian whose interest in Colin provides “Land Ho!” with one of its most rewarding and welcome exchanges. The finely tuned non-verbal communication shared by Colin, Nadine, and Mitch – who gallantly knows when three is a crowd – is one of the movie’s small joys.