Film critics face a challenge as a result of films like The Road to Galena. The idea that reviews are either positive or negative has become ossified in the age of Rotten Tomatoes, but there are numerous movies that exist between ecstatic approval and scorching rejection, where the usual descriptors scarcely seem suitable. They are sort of an emotional rut, evoking neither a strong enough positive or negative response to warrant more than a passing comment.
So how does one go about writing readable, even entertaining, prose about their viewing experience? The best course of action seems to be to accept The Road to Galena as a safe story safely told and then point out a few ways the film could have made more of what it had to work with without oversimplifying the exercise by allowing the assessment communicated here to swing artificially in either direction.
The Road to Galena, from writer-director Joe Hall, spans decades in the life of Cole Baird (Ben Winchell), who discovers himself on a lifepath he never desired but doesn't know how to leave it. His father John (Jay O. Sanders) encourages him to have higher aspirations, despite the fact that he aspires to purchase a farm in his hometown of Galena, Maryland, marry his high school girlfriend Elle (Aimee Teegarden), and work with his boyhood best buddy Jack (Will Brittain). There is a brief preamble that describes him as a lawyer in his later years, living in Washington, D.C., and married to someone else (Alisa Allapach). It also foreshadows numerous failed attempts to pursue that desire.
So how does one go about writing readable, even entertaining, prose about their viewing experience? The best course of action seems to be to accept The Road to Galena as a safe story safely told and then point out a few ways the film could have made more of what it had to work with without oversimplifying the exercise by allowing the assessment communicated here to swing artificially in either direction.
The Road to Galena, from writer-director Joe Hall, spans decades in the life of Cole Baird (Ben Winchell), who discovers himself on a lifepath he never desired but doesn't know how to leave it. His father John (Jay O. Sanders) encourages him to have higher aspirations, despite the fact that he aspires to purchase a farm in his hometown of Galena, Maryland, marry his high school girlfriend Elle (Aimee Teegarden), and work with his boyhood best buddy Jack (Will Brittain). There is a brief preamble that describes him as a lawyer in his later years, living in Washington, D.C., and married to someone else (Alisa Allapach). It also foreshadows numerous failed attempts to pursue that desire.
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