Road Scholar

The Go-Getter Directed by Martin Hynes

If ever a movie genre seemed exhausted, the road movie (discovering yourself while traveling along uncluttered horizons) would have to qualify. Follow a lightly damaged character in a car, then throw some quirky characters in his way and—bam!—you have a feature film. In that capacity, The Go-Getter, about 19-year-old Mercer (played by the appealingly sincere Lou Taylor Pucci) hitting the road to find his half-brother, fails. Watching the road-trip aspect of the plot is akin to scanning an indie screenwriter’s lazy checklist. A pot-addled Judy Greer, awkwardly eliciting some important exposition? Cross that one off. A wise old black man, dispensing paternal advice? Check! Using the title in dialogue as shorthand to the lead character’s personality? Yep. Discovering the difference between sex and love in the kinds of trashy-kitschy motel rooms that exist only on film? Well, writer-director Hynes likes that one so much he uses it repeatedly.

But what separates The Go-Getter from any number of middling movies about the joys and beauties of the open road (besides Pucci) is the fragile, tentative romance that blossoms between Mercer and the women from whom he stole the car he’s tootling along in. Kate (the always-welcome Zooey Deschanel), upon discovering that her main mode of transportation has disappeared, isn’t as angry as most people would be. In fact, when she calls Mercer on the cell phone she left in her car, all she asks of him is that he keeps her posted about his travels. And update her he does, as everyone he encounters reacts with violence and disgust when he asks them about his ne’er-do-well half-brother. And somehow, despite the clunky conversations they have (one exchange, about favorite ice cream flavors, is inexplicably whispered), one begins to root for this strangely lonely boy and this odd girl, who’d rather have midnight conversations about life’s minutiae than turn in the man who stole her car. And that we don’t find their interactions cloying or cutesy is entirely a testament to Deschanel and Pucci.

Even the movie’s excesses (of which there are plenty) are almost forgivable in their hands. After all, why should Kate react so violently to Mercer’s verbal slip about spending the night with a girl he went to middle school with? More importantly, why should that goad her into finally tracking him down? Yet Deschanel not only makes it believable, she manages to turn a plot device into a character trait. She has the classic Hollywood star’s knack for investing all of her characters with her own personality, something that generally enhances the underwritten women she’s played thus far; this time around, Kate benefits from that blurring of actress and role more than she suffers. Without Deschanel’s grounded flakiness, Kate would seem more than a little crazy. Instead, she comes across as a hopeless romantic who still believes in the kind of impetuous, sudden connections that were the studios’ bread and butter during Hollywood’s Golden Age.

But despite her best efforts, The Go-Getter is still full of holes and needless plot twists. Unlike last year’s quirky romantic road-trip flick, Wristcutters, the script isn’t strong enough to forgive occasional flashes of convenient coincidence. No one ever has any trouble locating whomever they’re searching for, and Mercer’s brother Arlen (yes, like songwriters Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen) has been very considerate by letting everyone he’s screwed over know his next destination. Even worse, Mercer’s final tête-à-tête with Arlen is both anti-climactic and utterly dull. But then there are those moments that shine out through the murk, of Deschanel’s wry voice over the phone, filling the empty horizon behind Mercer or the excited, slightly scared look that comes into her eyes when she’s about to tell a secret. More than a movie about becoming an adult, The Go-Getter is a feature-length audition reel for Deschanel to finally get the roles she deserves.