The Go-Getter: Hipster Road-Trip Redux

Details

The Go-Getter
Directed by Martin Hynes
Peace Arch Entertainment
Opens June 6, Quad Cinema

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More About

• Zooey Deschanel
• Diablo Cody
• Lou Pucci
• Indie Rock and Indie Pop
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media

Distraught over his mom's death, adorably awkward but soulful 19-year-old Mercer (Lou Taylor Pucci) steals a car belonging to plucky boho babe Kate (Zooey Deschanel), who oddly befriends, guides, and flirts with her victimizer via cell phone. Passing eccentric strangers from Oregon to Nevada, the Great American Hipster Road Trip ensues, as Mercer quests to find his estranged half-brother and roadside romance to a soundtrack jammed with Black Keys, Elliott Smith, and a nifty score by M. Ward (who, along with Deschanel, makes up indie-rock flavor of the moment She & Him). And yet, if you can look past writer-director Martin Hynes's familiar fest formula, his film modestly rewards with gorgeous sun-spotted cinematography, tender digressions in rather brave quantities, and believably charming dialogue that doesn't all sound like it came from the same brain (listen up, Diablo Cody). A bit reminiscent of the 1992 cult comedy Roadside Prophets—if, say, that film's Ad-Rock and Arlo Guthrie were substituted with wild child Jena Malone and a philosophical pornographer named Sergio Leone—The Go-Getter is a lovely escape, unless the idea of restaging the Madison sequence from Bande à Part makes you cringe.