Ride

Courtesy of Screen Media Films and Sandbar Pictures

There's a dynamism and bold intention in the acting of Helen Hunt that’s not seen in many roles for older actresses. I’m guessing that's because they often are offered sub-par roles that don't show the diversity and vitality of older age. Hunt has circumvented that system by writing, directing, and starring in this indie film about a mother who drops everything to follow her eighteen year old son to California after he puts off college to be a bohemian writer.

 Though Hunt is an admirable professional, she's green when it comes to writing and directing. Her writing, particularly, is trying to prod at a feeling that she simply hasn’t captured. The tired stereotype of the overwrought professional woman is boring and here it's almost nonsensical. The world of writing has yielded some interesting characters in the past, but Hunt's over analytical, pretentious publishing exec never nears the levels of empathetic response that she believes she deserves. Her relationship with her son, played by Brenton Thwaites, is simply odd, and not in a quirky, yielding to black comedy kind of way, but in a way where you wonder why things have been progressing the way they have been for so long.

 The son isn't much better, since the root of his problem seems to be that he is a spoiled, irate young man who fancies himself a bon savant writer like Hemingway, Vidal, and Kerouac. I'm sure that Thwaites is a culpable actor, but in this film he seems to meander through every scene disinterested by it all, and in the last third of the film he basically disappears from the plot altogether, only to return when his mother seeks redemption. It's difficult to even understand where in the film he evolves. Is the side character of the older writer who serves as a cautionary tale the turning point? I suppose so, but it's not explored more than in some eye-line matches between the two characters.

 While I applaud Hunt's endeavor to show strong, older female characters onscreen, she has some work to do in fleshing out side characters, understanding the arc of the plot around said characters, and not relying on melodrama and bombastic emotions to further a film's story. Hopefully we will see more of the fledgling writer/director in the indie realm.