The Go-Getter

The Go-Getter (Martin Hynes, 2008) [4]

I just don't know what to do with this one. It's definitely going to need another viewing sometime down the road. The grade is based on my initial reaction and while at first I didn't really care for this, the tide is turning a little bit. It isn't that Hynes is a horrible director; in fact, the images and the construction of the film aren't really that bad. I have a real problem with the story and everything else associated with. Lou Taylor Pucci plays a mopey teenager named Mercer, determined to head out on a road trip to find his estranged half-brother to notify him of their mother's death. To do this, he steals a car only to have the car' owner (played by Zooey Deschanel) keep track of him by a cell phone in the car. The two strike up a relationship as Mercer traipses across the West, meeting the standard oddball character associated with the road movie. That hardly any of this passes the plausibility test is the overriding factor to me. The entire relationship between Mercer and Kate doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever. The rest of Mercer's journey is too much of a stock road movie to make me feel any apathy towards him or it. That Deshcanel's performance, somehow intriguing in spite of its context, is the only thing keeping the story above water (my feelings may be a bit biased in this regard..see here). And yet I have the feeling that I'm take the literalness of the plot too literal and that it's completely blinding my appreciation for the film overall. That this review took several days of wrestling with these issues and still not coming a conclusion is proof that I'm not 100% confident in my feelings for the film. As it stands right now, it has some nice moments but the plot has too many incongruities for me to approve, even though I really want to.