Somehow, Hannah Marks' "Don't Make Me Go" manages to thread the delicate needle between maudlin medical drama, Young Adult-style hyper-emotional relationship arc, road trip shenanigan, and father/daughter tear jerker, and combine the most cloying elements of each to produce a narrative of singular devotion in demanding its audience audibly sob. It's like watching a "This Is Us" marathon where they take out the connective threads and just play the most weepy bits.
John Cho plays an unfortunate insurance broker named Max Park, who lives with his 16-year-old daughter, Wally (Mia Isaac), outside of L.A. Max has been a single parent since Wally's mom, Nicole (Jen Van Epps), took off with his college buddy, Dale (Jemaine Clement), and left them when Wally was a baby. Upon finding out he has a bone tumor near his brain, requiring an operation with only a 2-in-10 chance of survival, he instead decides to drag his daughter on an ill-conceived road trip from California to New Orleans, in order to attend his college reunion, where he hopes he can reconnect his daughter with her mother before he conks out. If that seems like a terrible and nonsensical decision, you have more sense than any of the lead characters.
In any event, thus ensues the life-affirming road trip, which goes on to involve driving lessons, a New Mexico casino, a cute boy in Texas, Wally's learning a valuable lesson about beer bonging, and, naturally, a beautiful meteor shower, displaying to the characters the glorious wonders of the universe.
It's generally hard to pull against Cho, who, along with 2018's "Searching," has found a genuine niche playing hyper-concerned dads, and he certainly gives it his all, but the script by Vera Herbert, whose previous work includes (checks notes), um, "This Is Us," is shameless to the hilt ("I'm sure we have tons of time before I have to think about that," the sadly unknowing Wally says, after her dad talks to her about her eventual wedding -- avast ye irony!). Marks' wishy washy directing choices also don't help, presenting the overripe material in the most banal of ways, while allowing the film's many, many music cues (including an over-reliance on "The Passenger," and, for no apparent reason, "Blue Monday") to do much of the work of creating atmosphere.
Apart from everything else, the sneaky twist ending desperately doesn't work, and instead creates a total hash out of any emotional resonance we were supposed to have been feeling. Near the end, after a particularly dramatic emotional reveal, Wally jumps behind the wheel of Max's beat up Wagoneer, and speeds down the freeway, weaving and bobbing between cars like a maniac, until an exasperated Max screams "What point is this proving?"
Quite, Max. Quite.