I get the feeling I'm supposed to know who this Stephen Fry guy is. But to me he's just some pudgy English fellow who somehow managed to land this gig driving around the U.S. from state to state, pausing long enough in each to deliver some remarkably unremarkable observations about American life. His "uber-smart charm" is touted on the DVD package, but comments like "Americans often identify a place by its being east or west of the Mississippi River" strike me as pretty banal, and when he expresses amazement (in Wisconsin) that a water bottle left out overnight in sub-zero temperatures is frozen hard by morning, that seems downright dumb.
Some of the things he omits to mention are pretty startling too. When he passes through Clarksdale, Mississippi, he waxes rhapsodic about the astonishing number of great blues musicians who hailed from there— and neglects to name a single one of them. (Wikipedia says that John Lee Hooker, Earl Hooker, Son House, Sam Cooke, Junior Parker, and Ike Turner were born there; W.C. Handy, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, and Howlin' Wolf all either lived or worked there at some time in their lives; and Bessie Smith died there.) No state escapes without some shallow, superficial commentary.
Not only is Fry superficial, he's supercilious as well, dismissing the great majority of what he encounters with a superior air and an endless stream of subtle and not-so-subtle put-downs. In New Orleans at Mardi Gras, while everyone around him is partying like mad and having a blast, he remarks that "fun" is a word that "makes me shiver with revulsion." In another state, when a couple who have invited him into their home give him an impromptu homemade serenade with a guitar and a recorder, he says (out of their hearing, of course) that it is the type of event that "makes my blood run cold." If those are examples of his charm, I'd hate to see him when he's being an obnoxious twit.
All in all: Fry goes some interesting places, sees some interesting scenery, meets some interesting people, does some interesting things, and makes a lot of uninteresting remarks about all of it.
Some of the things he omits to mention are pretty startling too. When he passes through Clarksdale, Mississippi, he waxes rhapsodic about the astonishing number of great blues musicians who hailed from there— and neglects to name a single one of them. (Wikipedia says that John Lee Hooker, Earl Hooker, Son House, Sam Cooke, Junior Parker, and Ike Turner were born there; W.C. Handy, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, and Howlin' Wolf all either lived or worked there at some time in their lives; and Bessie Smith died there.) No state escapes without some shallow, superficial commentary.
Not only is Fry superficial, he's supercilious as well, dismissing the great majority of what he encounters with a superior air and an endless stream of subtle and not-so-subtle put-downs. In New Orleans at Mardi Gras, while everyone around him is partying like mad and having a blast, he remarks that "fun" is a word that "makes me shiver with revulsion." In another state, when a couple who have invited him into their home give him an impromptu homemade serenade with a guitar and a recorder, he says (out of their hearing, of course) that it is the type of event that "makes my blood run cold." If those are examples of his charm, I'd hate to see him when he's being an obnoxious twit.
All in all: Fry goes some interesting places, sees some interesting scenery, meets some interesting people, does some interesting things, and makes a lot of uninteresting remarks about all of it.