Mark Reviews Movies: DON'T MAKE ME GO

Don't Make Me Go, Amazon Studios

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 14, 2022

Vera Herbert does at least prepare us for her screenplay's biggest shortcoming right at the start of Don't Make Me Go. Our narrator warns that we're not going to like how this story ends, and as it becomes clearer and clearer that the entire premise exists solely for some kind of blatantly tear-jerker moment, the implication of that line also becomes apparent. We're not going to like this ending, according to the filmmakers, simply because it's sad. The problem with the resolution, though, is that it reveals just how emotionally manipulative the entire setup is.

Here's the thing, though: Up until that point, the film doesn't feel that way. Yes, this is the story of a father, who has decided that he will die of a bone tumor in about a year instead of risking surgery that could kill him sooner, and his 15-year-old daughter, whose only living or real family is the dad, as they bond during a road trip.

Obviously, Herbert's screenplay possesses a pretty formulaic gimmick and structure, but even so, the heart of this film, directed by Hannah Marks, remains centered on these characters, this relationship, and the conflict between a father's desperation to make the most of the time he has left with his daughter and the daughter's teenaged resistance to that connection. It's funny, sweet, and, until that ending just about derails the potential impact of just about any other and far sounder option that could have replaced it, emotionally potent.

The father is Max (John Cho), a fairly boring and unadventurous insurance salesman. He's a single parent, as his wife and the daughter's mother left the family for another man, but he handles that role about as well as anyone could. Max is mostly trusting of his daughter Wally (Mia Isaac) and pretty fair when, for example, he learns that she lied about sleeping over at a friend's house, only to sneak off to a party at the house of a boy she likes. He clearly understands the rebellious impulse, but Max is mostly disappointed about the absence of honesty.

Anyway, while that dynamic and the glimmer of conflict between the characters are established, Max has been having persistent headaches. He goes to the doctor and learns that there is a tumor growing near the base of his skull. An operation could remove it, but the odds of survival are against him. Max could chance the surgery and possibly die in a week, or he could do nothing and have about a year with Wally. Choosing the latter, he also decides that he has to track down Wally's elusive mother, with the hope that his daughter might have a parent in her life after he dies.

The excuse for the gimmick of a road trip is a forthcoming college reunion, which, thanks to social media, Max knows the man his ex-wife married—his former best friend, by the way—will be attending with a guest—presumably Wally's mother. Father and daughter pack up some necessities, load up his old station wagon, and head out from California to the reunion in New Orleans.

Until the two arrive at that reunion, the story simply revolves around Max and Wally spending time together in the car, at some stops, and in a couple hotels along the way. They just talk—about not much of importance at first, since Max is hiding his diagnosis from Wally, for the reasonable motive that he wants to spare her that pain for at least a while.

The father does push his daughter a bit to get some information about her plans for the future—potentially skipping college to travel the world and find out what she actually wants to do with her life—and pushes back from his more sensible outlook on life. These characters are modestly but firmly developed and established: Max's pragmatism, as well as his obvious love for his daughter in trying to teach her as much as he can about life while he still has the chance, and Wally's mixture of youthful defiance, adventurous spirit, and underlying insecurity about herself and her relationships with others.

That's all we need for the humor, to be sure, as the two playfully clash over gambling (where Max's plan to teach her about financial responsibility backfires), Wally's driving abilities (or the lack thereof), and just how fundamentally different they are as people and in perspective. Cho brings a certain stilted, awkward charm to the character, while finding those vital moments of Max confronting how precious and fleeting this connection with his daughter is. In what's essentially her debut performance, Isaac displays the right levels of energy and uncertainty, and between the two actors, there's an undeniable sense of the deep affection between this father and daughter.

That quality is especially notable in a few scenes—the most noteworthy of them being a dance the two share at a jazz club, as Max essentially lives out a future event he knows he'll never see. Hebert and Marks don't force the melancholy of such scenes (Cho does the heavy lifting, with nuance and stillness, in that department), which makes it all the more confounding when the film reveals its final maneuvers.

It has nothing to do with the college reunion or even another reunion, which forces Max to put on a brave, comforting face for his daughter. No, Don't Make Me Go has another idea in store. It so diminishes the story's entire purpose that, if not for the fact that the tale is so considered and effective until that point, it comes incredibly close to ruining the film's good intentions and better execution.

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