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'End of the Tour' visually dry, but intellectually stunning

<b>Mini-review: 'End of the Tour'</b>

To find a movie as visually dull and as intellectually stimulating as James Ponsoldt's fact-based drama "End of the Tour," we'd have to go way, way back to 1981 when "My Dinner With Andre" presented playwright Wallace Shawn chatting with avant-garde theater director Andre Gregory at a table for 110 minutes.

"End of the Tour" would be the lesser movie of the two, but at least Rolling Stone journalist David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) and mysteriously eccentric novelist David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel) change the scenery as often as they change their conversational topics.

The drama, written by Donald Margulies adapting Lipsky's book "Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace," starts with Wallace's 2008 suicide at the age of 46, followed by Lipsky's flashback to the five days he interviewed the Illinois writer. (Wallace taught classes at Illinois State University.)

Segal, wearing a bandanna around his head, humanizes the novelist as a perpetually addled, suspicious sort constantly on guard against being exploited or misrepresented by Lipsky, played by Eisenberg as a closeted literary fanboy whose own novels failed to match the attention and acclaim of Wallace's works.

"End of the Tour" does provide a fascinating insight into the relationship between a smart, semi-fawning journalist and his extremely perceptive subject. Although Eisenberg's performance works, we've seen the actor present this character before, unlike Segal's immersive, transparent take on Wallace, one of the top performances of the movie year so far.

Joan Cusack, Mamie Gummer and Mickey Sumner pop in as Minnesota denizens to break up the almost two-man stage play on film.

<b>"End of the Tour" opens at the River East and Century Centre in Chicago, the Evanston Century 18. Rated R for language, sexual references. 115 minutes. ★ ★ ★ </b>

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