It’s every parent’s dilemma: How candid should one be with children, as they progress through the teenage years?
And does — should — that paradigm shift, if the stakes unexpectedly turn dire?
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| It's bad enough that Max (John Cho) bears the weight of two heavy secrets; attempting to remain calm while his daughter Wally (Mia Isaac) is behind the wheel, is almost more than he can stand. |
Coupled with Hannah Marks’ equally sensitive direction, the result is a warm, touching father/daughter drama that is by turns funny, frustrating, maddening, poignant and heartwarming.
And often messy, just like real life.
Max Park (John Cho) long ago gave up his dream of a career in music, when his wife abandoned him shortly after the birth of their daughter, Wally. He settled for a drone-like office job, in order to have the financial security necessary to create the life he thought was appropriate for a child.
But at 16, Wally (Mia Isaac) is no longer a child, and Max is finding it more difficult to handle the impetuous recklessness and unfiltered emotional outbursts of these teenage years. He worries that they’re drifting apart, and this makes him nervous and uneasy … which, because she’s so well tuned to her father’s moods, increases her anxiety.
Max also has been suffering from increasingly severe headaches. Visits to a doctor produce a shattering result: a malignant tumor at the base of his brain. Although surgical intervention could save his life, his chances of surviving the procedure are extremely low. Without the surgery, he can expect to live for about a year.
Max therefore opts to forgo the operation, and instead spend the year preparing Wally for his eventual absence.
He doesn’t tell her any of this. He confides only in his on-again/off-again girlfriend, Annie, whose subsequent reaction — once she has a chance to process the news — is agonizingly uncomfortable (and very well played, by Kaya Scodelario).
Not everybody has the emotional bandwidth to watch somebody slowly die.
Max also concocts a crazy, Hail Mary plan: to reunite Wally with the mother she never has known, in the hope that — during these intervening years — the woman has become a better person who’d genuinely like to know her daughter. (He also doesn’t tell Wally about that detail.)
But his ex-wife hasn’t merely remained out of touch; she’s completely beyond Max’s ability to track her down. His one hope is that she might attend their 20-year college reunion in New Orleans.
Cue a nine-day road trip from Los Angeles: absolutely the last thing Wally wants to do, during a summer when she’d much rather hang out with friends. Max softens the blow by promising to teach her to drive; she gamely agrees “not to be miserable the whole time.”
Even though she rolls her eyes at the mere thought of sitting inside Max’s beloved vintage Jeep Wagoneer.
This is a strong breakthrough performance from the relentlessly busy Cho, until now a character actor best known for fan-friendly franchises such as Cowboy Bebop, the slacker Harold and Kumar entries, and for stepping into Hikaru Sulu’s shoes, in the Star Trek film series re-boot.
Marks draws richly shaded work from him. Max constantly struggles to control the despair and fear that easily could consume him, and he’s mostly successful when around his daughter; even so, we see the agony in his eyes. He similarly struggles not to over-react each time Wally says or does something stupid or hurtful, recognizing that displays of temper are no solution.
In short, Cho genuinely looks, sounds and feels like a father: not an easy assignment.
Isaac is equally authentic, in an impressive feature film debut. Wally’s behavior is all over the map: cheerfully buoyant in one moment, spitefully sullen in the next. But it’s also clear that Wally is more perceptive than her father assumes; we see that in her thoughtful gaze, during moments of silence.
And goodness, Wally is a handful. The meanest things erupt from her mouth, directed at her father; we flinch just as much as he does. Her impulsively disobedient acts are maddening, her later efforts at contrition not always sincere.
In short, she’s a teenager. We’re not supposed to like her all the time … even though Max knows that he’s supposed to love her all the time.
All that said, Wally has good instincts; she (mostly) knows when to pull back, when a situation starts to explode beyond her control. But her experience is lacking, her judgment not always up to the challenges of boy/girl relationships in the social media age.
She fails to perceive that Glenn (Otis Dhanji, appropriately smarmy), the guy she’s sweet on, is a sleazy jerk who simply wants to bed her; we also get a sense that her willingness to send him a semi-nude selfie hinges solely on whether he’ll acknowledge that they’re “officially” a couple. That’s a far cry from telling him to buzz off.
On a lighter note, Wally proves to be the World’s. Worst. Driver. Marks plays this mostly for laughs, but some of the girl’s time behind the wheel occurs during emotionally fraught moments.
Josh Thomson is terrific as Guy Connelly, a former college buddy who has stayed in touch; he’s one of those perfect friends with whom one could immediately be comfortable, even after the passage of years. You want to bundle him up and take him home.
Mitchell Hope makes the most of his brief appearance as Rusty, a hunky Texas motel clerk who catches Wally’s eye. Their brief encounter — touchingly romantic, in a shy and sweet way — is punctuated by a forlorn casual remark from Rusty, who in one heartbreaking sentence sums up the dead-end life he knows is in store for him.
Stefania LaVie Owen is hilariously outrageous as Wally’s coarse and slutty best friend, Sandra.
Production designer Felicity Abbott faced a daunting challenge, since this all-American road trip was filmed in New Zealand (!). Details such as wallpaper, flooring, electrical outlets and doorknob placement had to be tweaked. Cinematographer Jaron Presant helps establish the illusion, by adjusting the color palette as the journey progresses: oranges, browns and golds for New Mexico and Texas; and brilliant cyans, neons and pinks for Florida.
One odd note: I’m not sure why Marks and Herbert choose to open their film with a brief flash-forward. It doesn’t serve any purpose, and in fact is rather distracting.
That’s a minor quibble. Even given its somber undercurrent — actually, perhaps because of that — this is a heartwarming, richly sculpted depiction of the eternal bond between fathers and daughters.
Don’t be ashamed if you snuffle a bit, toward the end.
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