May 3, 2026 3:51am PT

‘The Travel Companion’ Review: A Bromance Goes Adrift in a Gently Wry Indie Amble

A portrait of a struggling filmmaker whose life and passion project have the same undefined form, the debut feature from Travis Wood and Alex Mallis is drolly ironic but not exhaustingly meta.

Guy Lodge

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Guy Lodge

Film Critic

@guylodge

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Oscilloscope Laboratories

So frequently does New York-based independent filmmaker Simon (Tristan Turner) repeat the shaggy one-line pitch for the documentary he’s working on — it’s “a nostalgia-piece travelogue about past, present and future, a eulogy for lost history” — that he’s probably long stopped thinking about what it actually means. If, indeed, it means anything at all. Simon’s life, too, has taken on the same unexamined shapelessness, as the early-thirtysomething keeps waiting for some undefined break, breakthrough or eureka moment, while doing very little to make it happen for himself. An unassuming but perceptive debut feature from writer-directors Travis Wood and Alex Mallis, “The Travel Companion” observes an artist’s supposedly roving spirit critically at odds with his manchild dependencies.

'The Travel Companion' Review: A Bromance Goes Adrift in a Gently Wry Indie Amble