John Travolta's Odd Directorial Debut Asks Little & Gives Little Back

Propeller One-Way Night Coach is an odd little thing. The directorial debut of actor John Travolta, based on a novel he wrote in 1997, runs only an hour long. It’s largely devoid of conflict or tension, and is narrated by Travolta, who adopts the perspective of the child protagonist as an older man, non-stop from beginning to end. It premiered at Cannes out of competition and split early reviewers, which I can’t say I’m surprised by. I myself spent the first stretch wondering what exactly I was watching.

I settled into it eventually. It’s an act of reminiscence without much purpose, and the dialogue is often awkward, but there’s nonetheless a certain charm to it that grows with time. Perhaps that’s because you reach a point where you learn to set your expectations here and no higher. But the experience, however slight, is ultimately a harmless diversion – more so than most forms of on-screen nostalgia these days.

Propeller One-Way Night Coach Is Stylish, Empty & (Mostly) Pleasant

Propeller One-Way Night Coach is about a boy and his mother traveling by plane. In December 1962, eight-year-old Jeff (Clark Shotwell) and 49-year-old Helen (Kelly Eviston-Quinnett) are flying across the country from New York to California, where Helen, an actress, has been promised a shot at getting into Hollywood films. They’re doing so via the titular setup: an overnight propeller plane making stops at several cities across the country before arriving in Los Angeles the following afternoon.

The route was already on the cusp of being old-fashioned by that point, as commercial jets were ushering in a new era of air travel. Today, it’s difficult to imagine that flying used to be this way. Travolta’s film sits in this weird emotional space, caught between a child’s awe at his first time flying and his older self’s reflection on this moment from a time when this experience is already long out of reach. And that this is no ordinary kid, but a young airplane obsessive – who has his own set of airline schedules in his room – adds another wrinkle. One person’s hyperfixation being presented as an object of shared nostalgia can, at first, be a bit alienating.

It helps that Travolta gives the movie a heightened, dreamy quality from the very beginning, when we’re treated to an animated opening credits that drops us into the era’s retro-futuristic aesthetic. Propeller One-Way Night Coach‘s most effective trait is its use of light, color, and set design to create a world shaped by childlike wonder. I wish Travolta had trusted in these elements to tell his story, rather than relying so heavily on the voiceover. With far more showing than telling, this could have been a much more interesting project.

The movie is best experienced as a recreation of what it’s like to be a kid and experience something that, in the moment, feels monumental.

That said, however, there are limitations that would’ve been much harder to overcome. The dialogue, when characters get the chance to speak, is quite clunky. There are multiple instances of Jeff encountering something beyond his understanding that the narrator explains, ranging from the sexual nature of a discussion between the pilots to a flight attendant having survived the Holocaust – while typical of narratives about revisiting childhood memories, this film leaves these episodes remarkably unexamined. They could have contributed to a thought about the realities that ’50s nostalgia whitewashes, or perhaps a broader look at the way air travel can connect people in so many different ways, but Propeller One-Way Night Coach doesn’t really seem interested in exploring them as any more than something Jeff remembers.

Doris smiling in close-up in Propeller One-Way Night Coach

The movie is best experienced as a recreation of what it’s like to be a kid and experience something that, in the moment, feels monumental. The complexities of life swirl around Jeff, but they seem so small in comparison to the simple joy of being in an airplane for the first time. The flight attendants, Liz (Olga Hoffmann) and Doris (Ella Bleu Travolta), become like co-conspirators, as if they’re the only other adults who can still see how special this all really is. The latter half leans into this a bit more, and I started to have a better time with it.

As much as I ultimately land positive on Propeller One-Way Night Coach, I’d hesitate to say I recommend it. Though I won’t be asking for my 60 minutes back, it’s about as far from essential viewing as you can get.

Propeller One-Way Night Coach is available to stream on Apple TV from Friday, May 29.