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“You’re not going to love the way in which this story ends,” Wally (Mia Isaac), 15, warns the viewers at first of “Don’t Make Me Go,” a father-daughter drama of startling honesty and humor. Max (John Cho), Wally’s protecting single dad, has realized that his complications aren’t simply from the battle of parenting his stressed teenager. A most cancers analysis provides him one yr to stay — and as a substitute of coming clear about his situation, Max packs up their wood-paneled Jeep for a street journey with an ulterior motive: To take a shock detour to introduce Wally to her mom (Jen Van Epps), who ran away with Max’s finest buddy (Jemaine Clement) when the woman was an toddler.
The setup is sort of a hazard signal studying “Warning: Treacle Forward.” But the director Hannah Marks and the screenwriter Vera Herbert veer from predictability. Life is unpredictable, and the movie gambles huge to make that time. In a single jolting scene, they set an emotional showdown on a nude seaside — however neither character finds the gratuitous flaccidity humorous. (Fortunately, the movie’s editor, Paul Frank, does.)
Cho and Isaac’s stellar performances expose the gulf between familiarity and intimacy. The 2 flinty characters usually tend to expose their very own weak bellies to outsiders than to one another. Herbert’s droll, scrupulously practical dialogue captures the journey of a guardian and a toddler studying to see one another as flawed folks. As Cho’s buttoned-up Max makes an attempt to ship a long time’s value of recommendation in the course of the drive, he reveals that he was as soon as a musician earlier than he settled into the position of a risk-averse accountant. Max denies Wally’s accusation that he quashed his passions for her sake, but the movie is smart (and brutal) sufficient to aspect together with her when she’s proper — as she actually is in her early warning in regards to the film’s polarizing finale.
Don’t Make Me Go
Rated R for teenage ingesting and considerable grownup nudity. Working time: 1 hour 49 minutes. Watch on Amazon.
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