The Long Way Down

[MonzaLapRecord]

Got a copy of Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's The Long Way Down last week and just finished watching it. It was ok but in my opinion they didnt manage to recreate the flavour of the Long Way Round. Anyone else seen it yet? What did you think?

[PirateJafa]

I felt there was a lot more bitching and moaning in this one.

Cheer up and enjoy the trip guys!

[zadok]

I enjoyed it. Quite entertaining.

[madmal64]

Read the book and hopefully santa has a copy of the dvd on board for me in a weeks time. If not its off to real groovy on Boxing Day.
The book is quite good but seems to really just skim over things.
Looking forward to seeing if the dvd gives me some more in site into some of the trip

[WasPhantom]

It was horribly rushed, the team obviously had too tight a scheduel as well, which meant the whole trip was rushed. It was different to the last one, it seemed more a case of just going for a ride, rather than the adventure that was the LWR. I own the LWR on DVD, and the book, but these ones I'm not sure about.

[MonzaLapRecord]

I bought the book and dvd for LWD, and i was dissapointed, i agree that the whole thing was rushed. Didnt get to see alot near the end except border crossings and Charley doing wheelies.

[k14]

Yeah I reckon it was a blowout. Specially when Ewan's wife joined it, what a joke. Africa just doesn't compare to Russia, Kazhastan, Ukraine, Alaska.

[bell]

Downloaded, er, I meant, a friend emailed me a copy, of the 1st episode. It was unsurprisingly very similar to the first episode of LWR.

Then I read a few reviews on amazon.com. Unless someone buys it for me I doubt that I'll bother on the strength of the 90% negative reviews that I have read. Some very critical comments re Ewan's wife joining in as mentioned previously.

A lot of the criticism that I read suggested that they over-produced it too much this time. They cut out the stuff that shows that it was a journey rather than just a bunch of diatribe from 2 guys who happened to be riding bikes from UK to Capetown. Does that make sense? Ah, can't be arsed re-wording it. Basically, they shouldn't have made the 2nd one...

Mondo Enduro torrent link anyone?

[kerfufflez]

Yep, I watched the whole series. As I recall I was quite disappointed in the first two programmes; No 1 was basically a repeat of the No 1 from Long Way Round, showing them setting up the office, getting visas etc, and No 2 was just a mad (ridiculously so) rush. The following episodes got better I thought, not quite so frantic, although they still had too short a time frame (imho) to do the whole thing.

They made no pretense (as in LWR) of the bikes being on their own with just occasional catch ups with the support crew, this time it seemed that the trucks were with them more or less the whole trip. And I got really tired with seeing the border crossings, I'm sure they described each and every one as 'well, this is the one we're really worried about. It could take 2 hours, or it could take days..' etc etc. A bit tiresome to hear it again and again and again.

I actually liked where Eve (Ewan's wife) joined the show, just for a bit of variety. I thought she did fairly well, fell off heaps!! and just kept getting back on again, so good on her.

But on the whole, was good. I enjoyed it.

[MonzaLapRecord]

The book stated that Charley was going to have another go at the Dakar. It will be interesting to see how that goes this time. I watched Race To Dakar a couple of times. The first time around i hated it, but i grew on me a bit the second time. It didn't say when he was going to have another go, i dont know if its this one coming up or not.

[ceebie13]

As a biking travelogue I thought it was very watchable. I agree that towards the end it all seemed to speed up, but if you think about it, that also happened in LWR with not a vast amount of footage shot in the States before suddenly they had reached journeys end. Good to see more European riding in LWD though.

We watched the DVD while Holger and Anja (see his thread: http://www.kiwibiker.co.nz/forums/showthread.php?p=1283266#post1283266) were staying with us. Their experiences thus far on their circumnavigation of the planet seem far more adventurous and outweigh LWR and LWD as they have no back-up support crew whatsoever and did not undergo any preparatory guerilla warfare training!. Admittedly they are taking two years to achieve their goal whereas Messrs MacGregor and Boorman chose to complete their journey in only 85 days. To me this just serves to prove that both LWR and LWD were designed primarily for charity awareness/fund-raising and as a "made for TV" exercise.
To that end, I reckon they did their job well.

The jury is out on whether Ewan's Mrs should have tagged along. Interesting though how little you see of Charley's family in any of it. I also loved the wise cracks and one-liners: Witness Charley's "I love what you've done to this place" remark to the Ugandan(?) President, and Russ Malkin's "... if you get into trouble, don't forget that we'll be right behind you and eventually we'll come across you!"

I reckon I'll still read the book having seen the movie...just won't bother with the tee shirt!

Long Way Up...with Eve in tow throughout...I dread the thought. As Charley said "I'll go and make my own fucking documentary!"

Three and a half stars from me!

[-df-]

watched up to ep 4 and got bored.

I just didn't enjoy this one anywhere near as much as the long way round (loved that).

Going to watch 5 & 6 at some point...but definatly not in any hurry...

[magicfairy]

I felt it was a bit of let down as well. (Book and DVD)

I guess like any sequel, it can never be as good as the original (The Empire Strikes Back being the exception) but if it helps raise awarness of motorcycling, and what has gone on in Africa - and continues to go on, good on them.

[MonzaLapRecord]

Speaking of Star Wars, that bit where they went and visited the set from the oringinal movie was entertaining.

[k14]

watched up to ep 4 and got bored.

I just didn't enjoy this one anywhere near as much as the long way round (loved that).

Going to watch 5 & 6 at some point...but definatly not in any hurry...
Yeah it was about the same for me, I struggled to watch through the whole of the final episode. Was a struggle for sure. Nothing compared to the excitement of the road of bones and shooting bears.

I do have to admit that the gorilla bit was quite cool. It looked as though Africa is just too crowded to go a day or two without coming across people. Whereas in russia and kazhastan they were on their lonesome for days on end camping out every night.

Look forward to race to dakar again, I rate that very closely behind long way round. Was a very well put together doco. Charley might even make it this time.

[scrubs]

I enjoy watching documentarys like these to feel and sense the adventure.

I unfortunatly dident find a smigdgen of it in LWR. It was too planned out.
I find nothing exiting about watching two blokes travel with fixers left right and centre, every bit of electronical and mechanical fandanglry you can think of; two support vehicles, a medic, a security guard, they even had a mobile defibrillator for fucks sake. All that SAS training at the beginning was laughable. Give me 'Mondo Enduro' any day.