[HanCinema's Film Review] "Lazy Hitchhikers' Tour de Europe"

So, a bunch of broke Korean college students get together and come up with a crazy idea. They'll go on a trip to Europe, funding themselves by making videos for the hostels where they'll be staying. But before any of that fun stuff can start they must get to the first hostel, which is fairly far away. Many hitchhiking and camping shenanigans ensue on the way to meeting the initial step of their crazy idea.

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Personally, I didn't find anything the hitchhikers did particularly interesting. Their general travels from place to place are about what I'd expect the experiences of any young person to look like. Sure, there's jokes, but there's the constant feel that these are in-jokes, or situational jokes, that only the people immediately involved will find entertaining in any way.

As a film, "Lazy Hitchhikers' Tour de Europe" could conceivably suck the viewer in and really let us identify with the world and experiences of these travelers...but that would require some degree of characterization. Yes, I know characterization is a bit of silly concept in a documentary, but for the life of me I couldn't tell you how any of these people differ from each other in any significant way. I know they have different skills, but personalities? Attitudes? There's more glimpses of that in the videos they made than in any of the actual footage.

The videos are the highlight of an otherwise dull film. There's not amazing, but it's quality YouTube stuff at least. I found myself how exactly any of the hostels were planning to use the advertisements. Going over the YouTube page of pm35mm (the group this movie is about), none of the videos seem to have been that popular. But that's just my cursory examination. A more detailed investigation might give a better idea as to what the general situation is like.

Don't expect anything like that from the documentary, though. This is a story about a bunch of college buddies bumming their way around Europe, eventually finding a way to do so that makes them seem less like crazy hobos and more like...well, I guess I have to give points for uniqueness on that front anyway. I can't bring myself to call them artists, but does the English language even have a word for vagabonds who employ themselves with film technology? I mean, minstrel might work. Mentally speaking I tend to think of minstrels doing the same performance multiple times, though, not perfecting a single piece then using modern technology to bolster their reputations.

There are lots of potentially interesting elements in "Lazy Hitchhikers' Tour de Europe" but that's really all they are is elements. A person could conceivably feel some empathy or admiration for the hitchhikers, maybe even laugh at the jokes, but there's no real unifying thread tying this documentary together. It's all just a bunch of stuff that happened. There's no sense of emotion, empathy, or catharsis, so at best this could make for good light viewing. In reality, though, there's much better shallow subjects worth spending time on than this fairly dull adventure.

Review by William Schwartz

"Lazy Hitchhikers' Tour de Europe" is directed by Lee Ho-jae-II.