MOVIE REVIEW : If It’s Friday, It Must Be Blank’s ‘Innocents Abroad’

In Europe, heaven is where the policemen are British, the mechanics are German, the cooks are French, the lovers are Italian, and everything is organized by the Swiss.

And hell is where the cooks are British, the policemen are German, the lovers are Swiss, the mechanics are French, and everything is organized by the Italians. --Mark Tinney, tour director Of all the world’s documentarians, the one you’d most like to have around to plan picnics or outings is Les Blank. The chronicler of back-country music and down-home cooking, eccentric fun and extravagant folklore, Blank has a filmography that reads like a smorgasbord of scrumptious Americana.

His movies have a shine, a sunny-afternoon ease, an intoxicating amiability. And his latest, “Innocents Abroad” (Monica 4-Plex), is a string of pleasures. Blank tags along with 36 typical middle-class Americans racing through 22 cities and 10 countries in 14 days--the Globus Gateway “European Horizons” tour--and by the whirlwind’s end, we’ve gained some perspective not only on Europe and its American “invaders,” but on the synergy between them. It’s a witty excursion that leaves you smiling and satisfied.

Other directors, in this context, would go for easy satire. Blank and his crew--including editor-sound recordist (and wife) Chris Simon and producer-narrator Vikram Jayanti--instead relax and look around. They soak in the sights, chat it up with their fellow tourists. The tour proves not quite the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am culture-chase it initially appears. Nor are the tourists really a flock of rubes, a gang of Babbits abroad, leapfrogging between the towers of Pisa, London and Eiffel, pausing for a chow-down at Baden-Baden, a striptease on the Lido, and a quick glimpse of the Alps.

Blank’s special genius is for recognizing and appreciating the particularity of his subjects; this empathy lets him slide right into their mind-sets. We see Tour Group KH1009A not as types but as people--or, more precisely, as the people behind the types: under the corny bad jokes, the friendly awkwardness and clannishness, the regional boasting.

Curious as their motives may be, for gobbling up Europe in a series of air-conditioned, heavily cushioned gulps, we eventually catch their viewpoint. Some have been planning this trip much of their lives; they want to grab it all in one bite, afraid that otherwise, they might not get any. One of them is returning to Cologne, and its cathedral, for the first time since he flew a WWII bombing raid. Another is nearly blind; as he sits by the bus window, his wife describes the sights and they video-record it for later viewing. Some of them muse on their roots: in Europe, or even China, where, a smiling couple informs us, everything good-- and bad--was invented.

Blank’s main focus is on the zip-trip’s urbane director, an extremely well-spoken, ironical Britisher named Mark Tinney, whose wry but helpful, knowledgeable but uncondescending views shape the entire film. Tinney, a writer and 15-year tour veteran, expertly mixes history and sociology, wisecrack and inside dope. In Italy, he warns the group that Italians don’t believe in lines or queues--and to watch out especially for the nuns. In Germany, he explicates on the martial spirit. On the road, he admonishes everyone to keep small change handy for the pay toilets.

Robert Flaherty, the great early master of the documentary form, may have had an “innocent eye.” But Blank has something almost as good: a delighted eye. A filmmaker who likes to scoop up good things for his audiences, he has that most precious of human qualities: He knows how to have fun--with people, rather than at their expense. Both Tinney and Blank--and Simon and Jayanti--prove the best of guides. Nothing is sure in this world, but, if you don’t enjoy yourself at “Innocents Abroad” (Times-Rated: Family) it may mean it’s time to take a vacation. A long one.

‘Innocents Abroad’

Mark Tinney: Himself

Tour Group KH1009A: Themselves

A Dox Deluxe presentation, produced in association with Flower Films/B.B.C./Centra de l’Audio-Visuel a Bruxelles/La Sept, Paris/Thirteen WNET/WDr (Koln) and Miel Van Hoodenbemt, released by Flower Films. Director/Cinematographer Les Blank. Producer/Narration Vikram Jayanti. Editor/Sound recording Chris Simon. Music Supervisor Harvey Shield. Running time: 1 hour, 24 minutes.

Times-rated: Family.