Vague Visages’ The Art of Adventure review contains minor spoilers. Alison Reid’s 2025 documentary features Robert Bateman and Bristol Foster. Check out the VV home page for more film criticism, movie reviews and film essays.

The Art of Adventure, a perfectly titled film by documentarian Alison Reid, rips through road trip tropes with an anthropological twist. In the 1950s, Canadian artist Robert Bateman and Canadian biologist Bristol Foster customize a Land Rover Series I — known as “The Grizzly Torque” — and venture off from the United Kingdom to study cultures and communities in both Western Africa and India. The “Rover Boys” themselves, as described by the media in 1957, invigorate Reid’s documentary with their reflections 50 years after-the-fact, while an abundance of 16mm archival footage re-establishes Bateman and Foster’s legacy as mavericks of their fields.

Reid splits narratives in The Art of Adventure by examining the subjects’ roles during their expedition. Bateman — now 96 years old and a famous wildlife painter — details The Grizzly Torque with murals about different cultures, while Foster — now 95 years old and a distinguished ecologist — focuses on the documentarian aspect and connecting with curious locals. David Kazala’s editing mostly maintains a brisk tone in Reid’s documentary, though the director rushes through different timelines to pinpoint the Rover Boys’ most relevant accomplishments. She also ignores any conflict between the road-trippin’ buddies, yet the gentlemen briefly (and comedically) clash in the present timeline as Bateman and Foster describe themselves as an optimist and pessimist, respectively.

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A chameleon-themed scene in The Art of Adventure captures the essence of both Bateman and Foster’s personalities. As Reid chronicles the Rover Boys’ 1957 journey, she acknowledges their need to both document and consume wild animals, along with their need to adapt, both then and now, as humans and naturalists. In the first act, both men discuss childhood bullying experiences, due to their bird nerd personas, with Bateman even stating that he was never a “proper teenager” and Foster admitting that he attempted suicide at age 15 after a failed French exam. As adults, the Rover Boys speak naturally about various critics and the evolution of their careers, though other interview subjects romanticize Bateman and Foster as if fame and wealth never affected their creative and ecological goals.

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The Art of Adventure romanticizes the Rover Boys so much that Reid loses sight of the anthropological premise. Full-screen graphics identify the length and locations of different stays in the 1957 timeline, but the director arguably doesn’t spend enough time providing historical context for Bateman and Foster’s sociopolitical commentaries in the present — whether it’s about local customs from the 1957 adventure, visiting guests who took them down different paths (like a British SAS officer) or even the big picture significance of internal wars throughout Western Africa. The Art of Adventure creates a pretty picture as a travel-themed film about trailblazin’ naturalists, but a documentarian must always spend some time rollin’ in the mud.

The Art of Adventure premieres theatrically on October 7, 2026 in Washington D.C. at The Avalon, followed by a Q&A with director Alison Reid moderated by Maggie Burnette Stogner, an award-winning filmmaker and former executive director at The Center for Environmental Filmmaking.

Q.V. Hough (@QVHough) is Vague Visages’ founding editor. Thank you for reading film criticism, movie reviews and film essays at Vague Visages.

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