BY MIRIAM RINN

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

MOVIE REVIEW

We are born into our families; we don’t choose them. This less than original observation is paraphrased by one of the characters in the intermittently successful family comedy “The Discoverers.” Written and directed by Justin Schwartz, the movie stars Griffin Dunne as a failed middle-aged history professor who drags his teenage children along to visit his estranged father and ends up in the woods with a bunch of historical re-enactors. Touching performances by Dunne as Professor Lewis Birch and especially by Madeleine Martin (the daughter on the Showtime series “Californication”) as Zoe Birch periodically raise the film above its anodyne level, but a contrived and far-fetched plot keep pulling it downward.

Once a rising academic star at Yale, Lewis is now teaching at a non-accredited Chicago community college where the dean makes it clear that he is in danger of losing his job if he does not pass all his students, no matter how dumb. To drive the point home about Lewis’s professional failure, he moonlights as a security guard. The one bright spot in this very dim life is that Lewis has finally finished his great work on York, the slave who traveled along with Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their expedition to the Pacific Ocean. Lewis has been working on the manuscript for many years, and he even has a publisher--Eastern Kentucky State University Press. Moreover, he has arranged to attend a conference in Oregon where he will present his thesis and perhaps get a better job. The divorced dad has even wheedled his two teenage children into going along on the road trip west, making it a family vacation.

Before the trio gets very far, but what feels like a long time into the movie, Lewis gets a call from his much more successful brother that their mother is seriously sick. Lewis turns around, catches a flight to Idaho, but when he and the kids arrive, Mom is dead and Lewis’s father seems catatonic. Days pass. Lewis gets through the funeral and is ready to hit the road to Oregon when his father disappears. Although the older man hasn’t spoken to his son or his grandchildren at all during their visit, Lewis feels obligated to find him. You don’t choose your family, etc.

This is an awful lot of plot, and we still haven’t gotten anywhere. It is not until Lewis realizes that his cantankerous and critical father, played by Stuart Margolin, has joined a group on their annual re-enactment of Lewis and Clark’s trek that the movie gets going. Once Lewis and his children join the trek, putting on period costumes and building relationships with other people, “The Discoverers” finds its footing, but it has taken a long time getting here.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of the film is the woodland setting, beautifully filmed by Christopher Blauvelt. These scenes express that sense of wonder that some find in nature, as well as the theme of discovery that runs through the movie. The human relationships are not as delicately managed, however. There is some predictable young-love stuff between Lewis’s son Jack (Devon Graye) and the daughter of another couple, and Lewis himself draws the affectionate attention of attractive Nell (Cara Buono) who really does not fit in with the group. Zoe and Lewis have most of the best scenes, and Martin brings freshness and spunk to dialogue that could easily have been bland and predictable.

“The Discoverers” provides easy enjoyment at times for moviegoers looking for diversion, but overall it can feel as tiring as crossing the country on horseback.