John Cho and Mia Isaac have incredibly genuine father/daughter chemistry in Hannah Marks’ “Don’t Make Me Go,” a road trip movie that embraces familiar plot points albeit with different handling. Cho’s character Max has just learned he has a tumor in his head that will kill him in a year unless he gets surgery that has a 20% survival rate. He shares this with a woman he’s been sleeping with, Annie (Kaya Scodelario), but decides to keep this news from his teenage daughter Wally (Mia Isaac), who is more concerned with what many teens are: a possible first relationship, listening to music loudly, her growing autonomy, etc. Knowing that he only has so long to live and that he wants to reunite Wally with her last remaining bit of family—her estranged mother and his ex-wife and classmate Nicole—Max sells a lie with a deal: they’re going on a road trip to his 20th college reunion in New Orleans, but sometimes he’ll let her drive. “Don’t Make Me Go” has herky-jerky moments with Wally behind the wheel that provide all too tidy a visual metaphor for how this well-intended journey can sometimes feel.
Taking after two-hander relationship stories, the stakes of this charismatic, sun-kissed, but shaky story are about the fragile bond between Max and Wally, which is threatened by the massive secret that Max keeps from her (making her penchant for sneaking out seem microscopic in comparison). And because they’re a teenager and an adult, the two have different, stubborn understandings of how the world works. The film’s sweeter moments clue into how they nonetheless need to learn from the other. And as they talk about her going to college, or watching Max back among his college buddies, it’s clear the two have opposing ideas of what the future means. For her, it’s opportunities she thinks her father will shield her from, like going abroad instead of going to college; for him, it’s a year tops. This is his chance to sneak in bits of life philosophy, which pop while their journey has Max facing his own past.
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Both actors, however, are saddled with storylines that aren’t fleshed out enough and can slow this road trip movie down (it’s a drawn-out 110 minutes when it’s clear that poignancy would make its gentle nature work shine even brighter). Cho has a great control over the isolation that Max feels having this ticking clock, which he usually treats with striking moments of silence, or a pained way of changing the conversation with his uninformed daughter, who thinks Dad is just being the square he always is. But the story struggles to make this feel more immediate, even when the sound mix sometimes fades out its music cues to remind us of his headaches.
With a more straightforward intent, “Don’t Make Me Go” yearns to impart some wisdom on the various Wallys of the world, who might take best to this story. By navigating the new strange territory of having a crush on a schoolmate who is more interested in using her, Wally learns in a belabored subplot what a good and not-so-good partner is. This conversation is brought to a head later when Max takes her dancing and tries to impart very literal advice about what kind of life partner he wants for her (with the context that he wouldn’t be around for that). It’s a sweet scene, covered in soft reds from the peaceful dance floor. It’s also a scene that gets much of its undeniable warmth, like much of the rest of the movie, from the meaningful volleys between Cho and Isaac.
Using a script by Vera Herbert that made the 2012 Black List, “Don’t Make Me Go” willfully embraces elements you can see in countless modern indies—a dying character, a road trip, dramatic reunions, feel-good music sequences—but it makes a clear point to handle them in a way that is nearly subversive, whether it’s the placement in the overall plot, or how a certain thread ends. The structure here is not about conventional pay-offs, and it does give “Don’t Make Me Go” its own distinct feeling, however familiar its pieces.
It turns out “Don’t Make Me Go” saves its boldest expressions for the end, with a twist ending that brings back a forgettable, however, whimsical voiceover from the beginning. At best, it leads to an unforgettable parting way of appreciating the life philosophies that have been bounced around by Herbert’s script and advocated by the film’s two lead performances; at worst, it risks being too cute.
In its bigger moments, “Don’t Make Me Go” embraces illustrative metaphors to a nearly didactic fault. A punchy casino scene early into the journey has Max showing Wally the tenuous nature of roulette, only for gambling to be used with a heavy hand when Wally tells her father he doesn’t bet on himself anymore (especially when it comes to choosing that surgery that might kill him). The goodwill of the analogy, an important lesson all the same from this story with similar flourishes, will come down to whether that hits you in the gut or not. [B-]
