R | 1h 33m | Road-buddy, Drama | 2024
“What We Find on the Road” kicks off with the 18th birthday of one TJ (Finn Haney). A tough-looking customer arrives at TJ’s door, bearing gifts—the keys to a beat-up ’68 Dodge Polara convertible that TJ later finds waiting for him in the back lot of a nearby auto-body shop.
The Polara (“Polara” was the script’s original title) is compliments of TJ’s long-absent dad, who also provides a note with an address and instructions for TJ to drive the jalopy cross-country to California. To quote Bob Dylan: “with no attempt to shovel a glimpse into the ditch of what” the note might mean.
Many young men would like a vintage muscle car to be bequeathed, gratis, on their 18th birthday, but it’d be much nicer if the chariot of coolness wasn’t literally falling apart at the upholstery seams (necessitating much duct-taping). It’s also got a highly suspicious, welded-shut metal box that’s welded to the floor of the trunk.
Off TJ Goes
With only the time of the meet-up, the address, and a pesky high school buddy Jake (Willam Chris Sumpter) who won’t be denied coming along for the ride. Sort of like Sam insisting on accompanying Frodo to Mordor, TJ’s off to meet his father after a lifetime of estrangement and resentment.
Packs No Punch
It’s almost jarring to see a film made today that stars a good-looking teen lead so unabashedly green behind the ears, goofy, gullible, and earnestly idealistic. It borders on annoying. Like, what’s in that welded box? Could be drugs. Shouldn’t we maybe open it before a potential highway patrolman does? Nope. Dad didn’t mention the box, let’s leave it alone. Okaaay.But, you know what? All cynicism aside, there should be more innocent onscreen teens. It helps that TJ’s unflappable optimism is grounded by being a son with the classic raw feelings of rejection, hurt, and resentment concerning his father.
There’s some quaint sleeping side by side on blankets (I have no idea why this bland film has an R-rating), and much viewing of America’s Arizonian, California-bound highways, that America romances endlessly in movies, because they’re, well, so romantic-looking.
But the film does look pretty good. TJ’s blue ’68 Dodge Polara convertible almost holds its own against Louise’s ’66 green Ford Thunderbird convertible. If they’d just, you know, tweaked TJ’s car a little bit—upped the cool factor by adding, say, some Cragar mag hubcabs—I’d have given the movie 3 stars just to watch that bad boy drive around.
