Bus of Fools

If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium rests upon a slight, bright springboard: a bunch of American tourists undergoing a special kind of American masochism called nine European countries in 18 days. What could have been a Grand Hotel on wheels swiftly degenerates into a bus of fools, overpopulated with drooling Babbitts and hatchet-faced moms. Humor centers around the foreign John with its mysterious bidet and its waxy toilet paper. A sleazy double-entendre occasionally surfaces, as when the tour guide observes that the cockney word for sausages is (smirk) bangers.

The film's romance is the narrow province of the guide (Ian McShane) and an American businesswoman (Suzanne Pleshette). Between their mooning glances, the viewer is given a fast shuffle of Venice, London, Brussels and Rome. The scenes flick by like telephone poles seen from a moving window; Director Mel Stuart is more interested in drawing gross caricatures of his gawking, squawking, hamburger-hungry tourists.

Only in one brief sketch does the movie suggest the bitter suite of insights that might have been. An ex-infantryman walks the Bastogne town square, explaining to a girl friend the Allied side of the Battle of the Bulge. As he stomps along, he passes a German ex-soldier who volubly outlines the battle to his wife. Booming away, the men pass like bateaux mouches gliding over an ancient shipwreck.

Such moments are isolated in a screenplay that is full of mocking disdain and covered with an insincere bonhomie. From now on, Jean-Luc Godard may have to train his insights elsewhere. After all, why bother to guillotine a victim who is busy poisoning himself?

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.