Cynical Cinema

The Go-Getter is a lot like other road movies.  The recent movie I thought of when I watched this film was Into The Wild.  And while The Go-Getter doesn’t quite reach the lyrical heights and literary feel of Into The Wild, it is similar in many ways.  First of all, they both star Jena Malone.  Only in this film, she plays a much different character.  A wild, mean-spirited seductress who wraps young Lou Taylor Pucci in a web of deceit and pain.  However, that is merely a small part of this terrific movie, and I should probably start at the beginning.

Pucci plays Mercer, a young man whose reaction to his mother’s death is to steal a car and try to find his brother to break the news.  Basically a good kid, he has never done anything like this before.  While making his getaway in the stolen car, a cell phone rings.  On the other end of the line is Kate (Zooey Deschanel), the owner of the car.  Bizarrely, they strike up a friendship over the phone as he drives around America in search of a brother he knows nothing about.  As in other movies, like Into The Wild, he meets up with a strange assortment of characters, among them the smoking hot Jena Malone.  After they hook up, he finally sees her true colours, and so begins his coming-of-age story.

Traveling throughout the country, searching for his brother, he gets older and wiser each time he meets a new group of people.  And he develops more and more of a bond with the girl on the other end of the cell phone.  At a certain point, the abundance of quirky characters and strange dialogue becomes almost overwhelming and cheesy, but that doesn’t really slow down the momentum of the movie.  While we might get tired of the strange people and the odd situations piling up one on top of the other, we never get tired of the bittersweet conversations between Pucci and Deschanel. 

Perhaps the most amazing thing about this movie is that while the quirkiness reaches a point where it verges on cheesy, other elements do not.  Is there anything cheesier in a movie than a dream sequence?  I would suggest not.  And yet, in The Go-Getter, there are multiple dream sequences.  Dreams at night while Mercer is asleep, daydreams while he talks to Kate while he’s awake, and strange sequences abound.  But they actually move the movie along, and each one individually is a wonderful little set-piece. 

The Go-Getter is a lovely, romantic, bittersweet indie movie that is more effective than any Hollywood big-budget romance in recent years.  It came out September 16th, from Peace Arch Entertainment.  Pick it up.