Burn Your Maps

We can debate if Burn Your Maps merely fetishises a different culture or holds it in true reverence, but I’d like to give it the benefit of the doubt. If nothing else, the performances are terrific all around.

Don’t think this story is one steeped in heavy drama from start to finish without room to breathe. Roberts’ script — written from an original idea by Robyn Joy Leff — is also very funny.

Likable yet tonally untidy.

It's all very strange and more than a bit silly, but somehow — even as characters travel halfway around the world — the plot never journeys anywhere that surprising.

For all of the film’s attention to the contradictory emotional aftermath of loss, its Mongolian escape valve feels strangely obligatory — not a reason to get away from mourning, but a gimmick around which a film about bereavement was built.

Unfortunately, despite some fine performances and enjoyable moments, the film never manages to make its quirkiness engaging.

Burn Your Maps is one of those movies that’s glib and facile and threadbare all the way through, then the ending sort of gets to you (you’d have to be made of pretty stern stuff if it didn’t), so you think back over what you’ve seen — and it’s still a crock.