Beautifully shot completely in sequence as a “creative decision” so that all would need to “go on the trip”—the film wears its high style and artistry proudly from its USC-educated and George Lucas in Love award-nominated helmer Hynes in some of the earliest scenes as Mercer imagines what the girl on the other end of the phone looks like and then pictures her riding along in the backseat.
Despite his admission that he isn’t religious and “given the fairly raw language and sexuality,” Hynes doesn’t quite get why it’s being labeled as such but noted that Christian seminary students who attended “one of the Sundance screenings… were intrigued by the threads of [what they assumed were] spiritual confusion that run through [the] road trip.”
Likewise I agreed with Hynes, feeling that — no matter how outrageous and highly unbelievable the situations were throughout the film from asking us to buy into its laid-back negotiation to car theft early on — it’s a relatable, nonreligious road movie that taps right into its 18- to 24-year-old target demographic of trying to discover just who they are, what’s important, and whom they’d like to invite with them along the way. Although, speaking as someone whose car has been broken into before, I can’t stress enough the importance of leaving thievery in the movies where it belongs as that’s not the world’s best conversation starter when you meet someone new in the real world.
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