Best-selling travel book adapted movie, Trinity The Nekad Traveler (from book Trinity the Naked Traveler) is a travel comedy drama movie. Even though it is proclaimed as a travel movie, but it doesn’t have the essence of movie like plot, problem, and solution.
For the travel part, it really has nothing beside showing some beautiful sceneries and time lapses video. The scenery shots are amazing indeed, but the scenes tell you nothing. Well, a good cinematography is not only about showing beautiful shot, but also can tell a story and furthermore give a deterrence effect to the viewers.
The movie tells a story about Trinity (Maudy Ayunda), a career woman who loves to travel. She loves to spend her leaves to travel, she also wants to do all of her bucket list before she married, that’s why her love life sucks and her parents also always nag her to get married.
Trinity’s parents are played by Cut Mini as her Sundanese mother and Farhan as her Bataknese father. The funny thing is they have to act with local dialect, but their dialect is very bad and lead them to stereotypical acting about local people.
In the early story of the movie Trinity narrated about the hardship to travel as an office worker, but through the movie there is no hardship shown. Trinity always get some chances to travel either alone or with her friends, everything seems perfectly fine. If she wants to travel then she travel, no struggle found to achieve it.
Trinity The Nekad Traveler spends most of its time by showing Trinity going from one place to another, serving picturesque scenes from many places in Indonesia and also some other country… but they all are plotless.
The first destination in this movie is Lampung, Sumatra. She goes to Festival Layang-Layang (Kites Festival) and meet a local boy named Aldo. Their chemistry and dialogue are very awkward and when they first met, Trinity told Aldo that one day he would regret something that he had never done and told him to travel.
Trinity really acts like an urban hipster citizen who loves to differentiate herself, teach others about life, and acts like she regrets nothing in her life (well, it’s quite hard to describe it in English, but you know what I mean, yeah?). Especially when she said, “I’m not a tourist, but a traveler.” What kind of justification is that?
From Festival Layang-Layang, Trinity goes to elephant conservation. There, Trinity meets Paul (Hamish Daud), a hot dude, a volunteer, and also a traveler. They talk for a moment but they both feel that they have met before, and then they awkwardly bring the theory of universe conspiracy. Yeah, they think that universe is conspiring to them to meet each other… hahaha funny isn’t it?
After Lampung, Trinity goes to Makassar, Sulawesi (Celebes). But this time she goes for work-related reason, not to travel. But… miraculously the day after, Trinity wakes up late and her plane is already left. Voila! So now she has few hours to travel before her next flight.
After Makassar, Trinity plans to travel abroad with her friends and also her cousin so they go to The Philippines. There a problem arise, Trinity wants to check another thing from her bucket list but it will be over budget. Her friends feel that Trinity steers the entire trip selfishly.
While they are on bad relation, Trinity is invited to Maldives by a mysterious man who calls himself Mr. X. All her expenses are also sponsored by Mr.X. Another funny thing is that going to Maldives actually exist on her bucket list. In Maldives, Trinity meets again with Paul and again she brings up the conspiring universe theory.
This Maldives part actually is not really needed, it is forced to be exist and there are too much advertising purposes on the part, the drinking water and the resort. Also it is not really helpful to build up tension, or develop the story, or solve the problem, or give a twist.
Trinity The Nekad Traveler is a plotless travel movie, it struggles in narrating the story. Like which one is the background story, the main plot, and the sub-plot, everything is blur. It is not only plotless but also flavorless, actually the movie has some romance flavor and drama flavor in some parts, but they seems forced to be exist and not really helpful to the whole story.
The story also is very preachy, on the part when they travel to Philippines Trinity has some problem with her friends which make her contemplates with herself and feel that she is self-centered but this problem has no resolution. When Trinity gets an invitation to Maldives from Mr.X but she has no money, her friends suddenly are willing to transfer her some money for her trip.
At the end, a moral lesson is added with a pinterest-wise quote. Trinity said that the most memorable place while traveling is our own country, wherever we are our heart is always here. On the other hand, the movie has a premise that it is important to enjoy the moment during traveling which she herself always said so many times during some travel parts.
Well, the movie is plotless, flavorless, and also preachy. Instead of travel movie, it is more like a tourism ad with some apathetic stories as a connector. The only good things from this movie are beautiful scenery shots, shots that make foods look tasty, the appearance of Bu Boss (Ayu Dewi), and a little bit travel tips in the early parts of the movie.
Our Score (4/10)
Title : Trinity The Nekad Traveler
Production : Tujuh Bintang Sinema
Director : Rizal Mantovani
Writer : Rahabi Mandra
Casts : Maudy Ayunda, Hamish Daud, Ayu Dewi, Farhan, Cut Mini, Rachel Amanda, Babe Cabita
Putu Radar Bahurekso
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