Lowell Thomas and the art of the random detour

Wait, what am I watching?

If you enjoy feeling like you’re trapped in a history teacher's attic while they cycle through random slide carousels, this is your movie. People who love 1930s travelogues will get a kick out of the voiceover, but anyone looking for an actual story should probably look at The Penal Code or literally anything else instead.

Lowell Thomas has this voice that sounds like he’s trying to sell you a bridge while simultaneously explaining the afterlife. He starts us off at the “bad man’s burial ground” in Dodge City. It’s supposed to be spooky, but it mostly just looks like a bunch of rocks and dusty dirt. The headstones are clearly trying to remind us of the “throbbing days of the old frontier,” which is a phrasing that sounds way more intense than a quiet cemetery actually is.

From gunslingers to… pots?

Then, the movie just decides we’ve had enough of the Wild West. We jump straight to some ancient missions in the Southwest, which are nice enough to look at, but then—and I swear I’m not making this up—we are suddenly watching people make pottery. 🏺

It’s the most jarring edit I’ve seen in a while. One second you’re thinking about outlaws, the next you’re watching a spinning clay wheel for three minutes. It felt like the film reel got spliced by a toddler with a pair of scissors. Honestly, it’s kind of funny if you don’t try to find a deeper meaning.

• That one shot of the headstone with the misspelled name.
• The pottery guy who looks like he wants to be anywhere else.
• The weird, sudden jump to an African exhibit in New York that feels like an entirely different movie.

It reminds me a bit of the disjointed pacing in Times Have Changed, where you’re just along for the ride whether the destination makes sense or not. You can feel the movie trying to convince you that all these things are connected by some grand theme of “humanity,” but it’s really just a bunch of scraps left over on the cutting room floor.

If you watch this, don’t look for a plot. Just watch it for the weird, grainy textures and the fact that Lowell Thomas sounds like he’s shouting into a gale-force wind the entire time. It’s a strange little artifact. Don't overthink it.