I just had a long ass flight, so I powered through as many movies as I could before I passed out. For the first time in ages, I didn’t sob through one of them, although The End of the Tour is so boring, you might cry. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to put me to sleep.

Jesse Eisenberg plays Rolling Stone reporter, David Lipsky who joins David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel) for the end of his book tour for Infinite Jest. What begins as a tentative bromance turns sour as the audience realizes, too late, that we’re dealing with two self-absorbed artists harboring jealousy for one another.

Lipsky originally pitches the story to his editor so he can interview/fangirl over Wallace. As these two misunderstood auteurs bond over junk food, one can’t help but remember the mutual ass kissing in True Story. But at least watching Jonah Hill and James Franco fawn over each other culminates in a murder trial. Nothing really happens in The End of the Tour, unless you count Wallace’s inevitable suicide, which isn’t a plot device so much as a biographical detail.

Oddly enough, Wallace, a famous writer, is envious of Lipsky because… I don’t know, his ex-girlfriend flirts with him? Then Wallace tries to get back at Lipsky by hitting on his girlfriend over the phone. This d-ck measuring is bad enough without having to listen to Wallace drone on about his hatred of commercialism. I hate artists.

Segel has better range than we give him credit for. I’m not sure if he’ll score a nomination this time, given how little buzz the movie’s getting, but it’s a move in the right direction. He and Eisenberg have great chemistry together as friends/jealous rivals/an old married couple.

Of course this literary wank got 91% on Rotten Tomatoes.

#theendofthetour #review #jesseeisenberg #davidfosterwallace #drama #jasonsegel #davidlipsky #infinitejest #periodfilm