It's not quite a rom-com, and these aren't quite college kids. "Along for the Ride" finds itself in some interesting and positive territory, flipping the timetable and giving some drama to the night owls.
Based on Sarah Dessen's 2009 novel of the same name, "Along for the Ride" follows the story of high school graduate and semi-awkward girl Auden (Emma Pasarow).
She worries day in and day out that she missed the chance to be a normal kid, having always pushed herself to the limit academically and grown up with an absentee "father" (Dermot Mulroney) and overly critical mother (Andie MacDowell).
Taking a summer to try to reinvent herself, or at least become someone a little different, Auden travels to stay with her father in the small beach town of Colby, N.C. But things don't appear to be much better in this setting at first.
Auden's father is still brushing her off, her stepmother is overwhelmed with raising a new baby, some of her co-workers appear to dislike her, and trying to fit in with the locals at a popular beach makeout and drinking spot doesn't seem to be going all that great either.
So Auden grabs a coffee, picks up a book, and goes to read on the pier because it turns out she suffers from insomnia. While on the pier, Auden meets a mysterious boy and fellow insomniac named Eli (Belmont Cameli) who she eventually befriends. And when the college-bound teen expresses a desire to do things she never got the chance to do as a kid, Eli takes it upon himself to help her, showing her everything from mini golf to Connect 4.
ON THE SURFACE
On the surface, "Along for the Ride" looks like it'll end up a simple and cute little romantic drama. But as the 1 hour and 46 minutes of runtime goes on, the movie will unveil a surprising number of layers to its story, including grief, emotional trauma, marital problems and the value of purposefully enjoying the little things in life most kids take for granted.
The film doesn't address every one of those issues perfectly, but it does a better job than one would expect from a straight-to-streaming video coming out the same week as a massively anticipated Marvel movie.
"Along for the Ride" comes at a strange time for Netflix, when the streaming giant is reporting losses in subscribers and firing staff, trying to correct course and make its shareholders happy once more.
It's great to see Netflix still has quality gems like "Along for the Ride" up its sleeve as bigger budget blockbusters swallow large resources in the background, like "Knives Out 2" and Zack Snyder's forthcoming epic that just started filming, "Rebel Moon."
GREAT CAST
"Along for the Ride" has a great cast. Pasarow and Cameli have great chemistry as they work out the extent of their "friendship." Perhaps the smartest decision the movie made was avoiding the designation of "soul mates" for these two.
They're at different points of their lives and struggling with unique burdens as their paths cross. Auden is clearly carrying more emotional trauma from her family's divorce and awful parents than she wants to admit, and Eli (in a wonderful example of positive masculinity) has shut himself off for months while grieving the loss of his best friend and fellow BMX athlete.
Their being entwined isn't about love at first sight or enemies to lovers. It is instead trauma bonding, as these central characters realize they're each carrying a load that's psychologically taxing and work to help each other through their problems.
And, along the way, Auden makes friends and forms a tight-knit group that knows their summer is limited, and they're going to make the most of it by being kids in a beach town. So the audience is treated to the usual suspects that always appear in these movies -- friends driving a car at night while singing together, a party or two, and a little underage drinking. These are the things that ultimately give the film its "good vibes only" status.
Between the happy moments of friends enjoying their final summer before college, "Along for the Ride" will throw in those scenes that make it a drama, such as Auden witnessing her lazy father sabotage a second marriage and Eli coming to terms with his grief and crying to express the pain he has pushed aside for so many months. These are the moments that make this movie a little wiser in life experience than it appears.
ONE ISSUE
It's fortunate for Netflix that "Along for the Ride" ends up being closer to "The Half of It" and nothing like "He's All That" in terms of charm, quality, intelligence, and heart.
The one issue "Along for the Ride" has is Auden's parents. This movie tries to take on so many themes in its under two-hour runtime, that it glosses over and resolves their issues a little too easily.
Auden's father, who is the living definition of a manchild, gets over himself rather quickly and learns to be a better father for his newborn in record time. And her mother, who is overly critical and insufferable for every scene of the film she's in, is suddenly fixed and over her issues when it comes time to wrap everything up in a nice neat bow at the end of the story.
In a way, Auden's mother is like Abuela in "Encanto." She caused her daughter a lot of emotional pain by dismissing all her potential wants and interests. And by the end of the movie, she hasn't apologized nearly enough to be as redeemed as the script makes her out to be. It's frustrating when antagonistic, agitating characters get a clean slate for the sake of runtime.
But to the film's credit, cinematographer Luca Del Puppo provides some gorgeous shots of coastal North Carolina, especially on the pier at night when Auden and Eli first meet. It adds an additional layer of authenticity for this little gem of a movie.
"Along for the Ride" is available on Netflix today.