The gorgeous scene stealer in this gentle-spirited road movie is the country of Iceland, depicted in breathtaking wide-angle shots by cinematographer Andrew Reed. Providing the camera with a reason to be there is the story of Mitch (Earl Lynn Nelson) and Colin (Paul Eenhoorn), two aging friends and former brothers-in-law on a quest to “get our groove back.”
Funded by the more deep-pocketed Mitch, the trip itinerary has them eating in high-end restaurants (at times, it feels like a late-in-life take on the Steve Coogan/Rob Brydon comedy “The Trip”), staying in boutique hotels and traversing the countryside in a rented SUV.
The bombastic Kentuckian Mitch takes the lead, initially surprising his Australian-born friend with two first-class plane tickets to the tiny country. Colin, still unsteady after the death of his wife some months earlier, reluctantly agrees — because it’s obviously nearly impossible to say no to Mitch, a weed-smoking, profanity-spewing horndog in adorable-grandpa camouflage.
When the two older men cross paths with Mitch’s much younger relative, Ellen (Karrie Crouse), and her friend Janet (Elizabeth McKee), traveling through Reykjavik at the same time, they convince the women to join them for an evening on the town. But directors Aaron Katz and Martha Stephens resist the urge to send the story in any cartoonish directions; the grad-student women merely roll their eyes at Mitch’s ribald banter.
Later, the two men open up about their respective struggles and humiliations (Mitch’s retirement, it turns out, was not as voluntary as he initially described it) and encounter a solo traveler (Alice Olivia Clarke) with whom Colin has a spark.
Unlike so many movies about aging, “Land Ho!” never veers into the cutesy or wacky. Indeed, the conversation between the two is at times so realistic — Mitch’s verbal domineering, in particular — it may have you feeling the urge to ditch them and seek out the hot springs on your own. But it’s also a refreshingly naturalistic depiction of the dynamic of traveling companionship — at any age.