I didn’t really like McCarthy’s other incomprehensibly lauded The Station Agent, either. For The Visitor, the pedestrian dialogue is the first thing that comes to mind. and the self-righteous voice of the filmmaking. The acting is very bad with the exception of Danai Jekesai Gurira as Zainab, who is good but not great. There is no reason for me to believe that a rich, grumpy white man (Walter) who comes home to his expensive Manhattan apartment to find two non-white people living there (he hasn’t been home in a while, he teaches in Connecticut) would kick them out, and then moments later offer for them to stay for a few days. The film implies that he has a soft spot because he misses his dead Misses, but his scenes with Tarek are very phony, and the old-white-man-dancing-to-ethnic-music scenes (and there are a few) and then learning to play them (in the Subway stations, angrily, by the end of the film) all made me physically roll my eyes. Uninspired cinematography and pacing, as well as an out of place piano score, all came together to be no good.