Alternate title: How Mitch and Colin Got Their Groove Back. In Land Ho!, two aging men, formerly brothers-in-law but now each unattached, journey to Iceland to have a bit of fun.
I couldn’t help but be reminded of other two-buddies-on-vacation comedies, The Trip and Sideways. Just as in those movies, one of the men (Mitch, played by Earl Lynn Nelson) is gregarious, crude, and sex-obsessed while the other (Colin, played by Paul Eenhoorn) is more reserved and wishes they could keep their trip to themselves.
Land Ho! isn’t as funny as either of those (highly recommended) earlier efforts. It’s gentler and more naturalistic in its portrayal of two guys who may be over-the-hill but who aren’t eager to descend life’s downward slope.
They eat in the nicest restaurants in Reykjavik, flirt with Mitch’s 20-something cousin and her friend at a dance club, and drive across the island nation’s stark black-and-gray-and-green landscape. They bullshit and make movie references with awful Jim Carrey and Arnold Schwarzenegger impressions and get on each other’s nerves and bicker and all the things we all do when we spend that much concentrated time with a single person.
It doesn’t go much of anywhere, but it’s a pleasant enough journey.
