Preposterous narrative twist ruins promising father-daughter drama 'Don't Make Me Go'
“Don't Make Me Go” - ★ ½
“Don't Make Me Go” possesses a wonderfully provocative title that could apply to both its principal characters.
California teen Wally Park (Mia Isaac) doesn't want to go with her dad to his 20th college reunion in New Orleans.
Dad, alias Max Park (John Cho), doesn't want to go to heaven where he's presumably headed within a year because a brain tumor will kill him, and chances are that any surgical interventions would do the same, only quicker.
We find out about the cancer at the start of the story, so it hardly qualifies as a spoiler.
Besides, this initially nuanced, painfully realistic depiction of a bittersweet father-daughter relationship supplies its own spoiler in the form of a jaw-droppingly ridiculous third-act plot twist that wipes out all of the movie's understated good will in a single sequence.
(For the record, I have reviewed three movies with this same preposterous narrative twist, but this one ranks as the most damaging.)
Max persuades Wally to take an extended road trip with him to the reunion by promising to teach her how to drive.
But he has an ulterior motive - to introduce Wally to the mother (Jen Van Epps) she has never met, and perhaps, by some miracle, she will take over parenting duties after his death.
“Don't Make Me Go” belongs to a subgenre of domestic dramas about people facing their pending mortality by striving to make things right before they go.
So, when will Max tell Wally about his diagnosis? Not for a long time, because he knows it will change how she interacts with him, and he wants to maintain their relatively healthy and positive relationship for as long as possible.
That serves as the heart of Hannah Marks' promising drama. They're a prickly pair, flawed in their decisions, but bonded by their good hearts.
Dad doesn't like her shallow boyfriend (Otis Dhanji). She doesn't understand why he avoids taking chances, such as pursuing his dream of becoming a rock star.
Cho, a graduate of the “Harold and Kumar” stoner comedies and a “Star Trek” reboot (as Mr. Sulu), makes an appealing everyday dad constantly torn between his desire for Wally's independence and his default setting to be a protective parent.
Utterly charming and acutely cute, Isaac creates a winning adolescent character whose intellectual decision-making becomes compromised by hormones and peer pressure, although the screenplay seems far more interested in plumbing the depths of her dad's character than hers.
“You're not going to like the way this story ends,” Wally says early on, bluntly reviewing her own movie in voice-over narration. “But, I think you're going to like the story.”
Fair enough.
Still, by warning us about poor audience (and critical) response to the ending, did screenwriter Vera Herbert think she could somehow soften the narrative train wreck of her own creation?
Starring: John Cho, Mia Isaac,
Jen Van Epps, Otis Dhanji
Directed by: Hannah Marks
Other: An Amazon Studios release on Amazon Prime. Rated R for language, nudity, sexual situations. 110 minutes