Don't Make Me Go: Revelatory road trip

Don't Make Me Go (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for graphic nudity, profanity, teen drinking and vulgar sexual candor

Available via: Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang

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?

 

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.

Writer Vera Herbert has long demonstrated a superbly nuanced sense of relationship dynamics: most notably as a prime mover on the TV series This Is Us, which garnered well-deserved Emmy nominations for Outstanding Drama Series during four of its six seasons. Her scripts speak from the heart, and this new film is particularly personal — and likely cathartic — because it was inspired by the bond with her father, who died unexpectedly when she was 18.

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.