In a World of Six Billion People, it Only Takes One to Change Your Life

At the start of The Visitor, Richard Jenkins (Cheaper by the Dozen) is your typical burned out professor who just white outs the term and year on the syllabus, and only if he remembers. Criticism isn’t his strong suit either as he has been through five piano teachers without a second lesson. Just your typical mid life crisis, but about ten years after he should have grown out of it.

All that changes when he has to go to a conference in New York City and a couple has taken up residence in his apartment there in his absence. Instead of calling the police like a normal person, Jenkins, longing for some human contact out of the norm and let the two Muslims stay. In Haaz Sleiman (American Dreamz), Jenkins finds a teacher that doesn’t just dismiss him learning the djembe (a Syrian drum) at such an old age.

This first half of the film is as exhilarating as Jenkins taking up the foreign instrument with plenty of great music that moves the movie along. But not surprising considering the origins of the house guests, the second half delves into a heavy handed commentary on the immigration policies in a post-9/11 world. Even during the first half, you know it is coming, but you wish they would have just stayed with the uplifting story of bring people together with music.

The Visitor gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.