John Travolta's new film is a dud. It shows why great actors can be bad directors

The star's directorial debut Propeller One-Way Night Coach has premiered at Cannes - and one critic dubbed it a 'disaster'. It's the latest example of an A-lister heading behind the camera with baffling results.

At the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday night, the festival's dapper organiser, Thierry Frémaux, introduced a screening of John Travolta's new film Propeller One-Way Night Coach – the first he has directed. "I have a theory about films made by actors," said Frémaux. "They're always intimate, unique, personal, and full of ideas of cinema."

Well, maybe. But, is that just a tactful of way of saying that such films aren't any good? Certainly the reviews for Travolta's film have been mixed to say the least: one critic dubbed it a "disaster". And is it a coincidence that films directed by established actors are often seen at prestigious festivals like Cannes, and then rarely ever seen again?

It should be said that actors-turned-directors are some of the most successful film-makers in cinema history, from Charlie Chaplin to Clint Eastwood to today's favourites, including Greta Gerwig and Jordan Peele. But this is a different phenomenon. There are certain actors who reach a certain level of fame, and realise that they can get their quirky passion projects financed – or, if push comes to shove, they can finance those projects themselves. Even better, their films will be welcomed by festivals, however weird, ill-judged or, in Frémaux's words, "unique" and "personal" they may be.

A classic example is Ryan Gosling's Lost River, an exercise in David Lynch-ish surrealism, which premiered in Cannes in 2014. I quite respected its oddness, but not many other people did – and Gosling has never directed since. More recently, Chris Pine directed, produced, co-wrote and starred in Poolman, a hippy detective yarn which was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2023 and earned terrible reviews, before sinking without trace.

Travolta's film is in that category. He has been a Hollywood star for 50 years, so the fact that he has waited until now to direct, at the age of 72, suggests it wasn't always a burning ambition. Another sign that his film was never destined to be a box-office smash is its impossible-to-remember title. And then there's the........

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