Mark Reviews Movies: JOYRIDE (2022)

Joyride, Magnolia Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 22, 2022

There are unlikely friendships, and then there's whatever is happening in Joyride. The movie revolves around the growing bond between a grieving boy, whose mother recently died, and a new mother, who has arranged to give her baby to new family. If the general dynamic of this relationship already feels like a perfect kind of coincidence, that's just the start of the contrivances running rampant in Ailbhe Keogan's screenplay.

Actually, they start before we even get to know the broad circumstances of these characters. The kid is Mully (Charlie Reid), an apparent regular at a local pub in a small Irish town, and at a memorial/fundraiser for his recently deceased mother, the boy catches his father James (Lochlann O'Mearáin), currently in debt to some violent people, stealing money intended for a hospice care facility.

Upset, Mully takes the stolen money from his dad, runs out into the night, and steals an idling cab to away from his father. On the highway, Mully discovers a baby in the backseat, along with the newborn's sleeping mother Joy (Olivia Colman). Yes, on top of everything else, the title is a pun.

If one accepts all of this setup as sound or likely or even probable, the rest of this story keeps piling on manufactured obstacles and tough-to-swallow manipulations, until very little of it seems believable. That's something of an unfortunate accomplishment, considering the plot's foundation as a simple and generic road trip tale about mismatched people learning how much they have in common.

Mully, who takes over driving duties without any difficulty, wants to run away to an unseen aunt's house, and Joy is desperate to bring her baby to a friend for adoption, before flying off to some new life in parts unknown. The kid is wise beyond his years, of course, helping Joy soothe and feed the baby—even teaching her how to properly nurse the newborn (He has a baby niece at home—also unseen, just like that baby's mother, as if the budget could only accommodate actors to play characters most essential to the plot). Making his acting debut, Reid is fine as the precocious kid, although it's difficult to tell if some of the more forced moments of his performance are on account of the writing of the character or the direction of Emer Reynolds.

Joy is a harried mess, mostly because she doesn't want a baby and on account of her surprise motherhood bringing up troubling memories of her own mother. Some brief flashbacks and heavy-handed dialogue try to do a lot of heavy lifting to explain the character's hesitancy and trauma. By the way, Joy also went to school with Mully's mother, so she knows what a good person, woman, and mother the kid's mom was—qualities that Joy doesn't believe she can match. Colman does what she can with this confused and underwritten role, but it's obviously a challenge.

Whatever sympathy we might form for these characters and however these very different people might find ways to connect with other, though, are overwhelmed by a constant string of troubles. They're as simple as the car running out of gas—meaning a hiking and hitchhiking expedition to the nearest service station.

Others are as convoluted as James being accosted by his creditors—meaning the dad goes searching for the kid and getting in the way of this budding friendship/surrogate-mother-child bond—or as haphazard as both characters somehow losing track the money—meaning they have to stick together longer to find a way to replace it. That the money randomly turns up when it's needed for the introduction of another problem shows how transparent the machinations of the plotting actually are. The whole scheme of impediments starts to feel like an intentional distraction from the fact that the filmmakers don't trust the potential or even the feasibility of the central relationship.

Maybe they shouldn't, either, especially within the scope of the gimmicky storytelling that crams these two characters together and seemingly keeps them there against their will. There's almost certainly a more natural and believable way to get at the points Joyride tries to make about the struggles of being a family and the potential of finding people who might as well be family. That way surely isn't within the awkward, manipulative tale being told here.

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