Rolling Family

Thoroughly wonderful.

Director-writer Pablo Tapero keeps the proceedings low-key and realistic. He doesn't hit you over the head with his ideas, yet he manages to say a lot about human nature.

Rolling Family is not a movie of ideas but an emotional and tactile experience of economy-class travel. In surveying a large swath of the Argentine landscape, it could be a companion piece to "The Motorcycle Diaries."

The film has humanity to burn, but its loose structure makes it hard to connect with the multiple characters.

This Argentinean comedy is short on plot and leisurely in its character development, though by the end it's become a modest and genial portrait of a dysfunctional family.

Still, after an hour and a half of exquisite photography and mushy action, audiences may well ask the unspoken question that plays across the faces of the Rolling Family clan right before the closing credits. Was it worth it?

The repeated sight of cute roadside animals and kissing cousins doesn't much enliven the long trip, and while Graciana Chironi lends humanity to the role of the white-shawl-wearing, high-blood-pressure-battling Gramma, the movie rarely if ever crosses the border between familiarity and surprise.