Stop and Go – Film Review

Blake (Mallory Everton) and Jamie’s (Whitney Call) big plans for the year come to a screeching halt when they are forced to rescue their grandmother and her beloved dog from her nursing home before their irresponsible sister can get there first. They embark on a hilarious, cross-country race against time while contending with a deranged dog breeder, a highly inappropriate nine-year-old boy, and a clueless Romeo, all in the name of family.

Mallory Everton and Stephen Meek‘s Stop and Go is an extremely short movie running at a mere eighty minutes including credits. With a running time that short, you’d more than likely expect this to be an incredibly breezy, light-hearted, and genuinely funny movie with lots of heart to go around. Sadly, though, you’d be wrong to expect that because Stop and Go doesn’t really offer too much of that.

Strangely enough, it’s not the pacing that makes this movie a disappointment, but rather, the script by its two leads. I’m sure they are proud of their ideas for this film and that’s great, but personally, this film and its humor just didn’t work for me whatsoever. Comedy is an extremely subjective thing – some people are going to find things hilarious whereas others will stare at the screen in complete silence.

So I’m sure some will watch this film and find themselves laughing quite frequently, but truth be told, I hardly ever laughed while watching Stop and Go and after all, this is a comedy. So, a comedy with no laughs is hugely underwhelming for obvious reasons. But this movie isn’t all terrible. Its two leads – Everton and Call – have some of the best chemistry I’ve seen all year. Everything they do in this movie feels grounded. These two feel like legitimate friends and it’s a lot of fun seeing them interact with one another, giving off great performances in a remarkably natural way.

And I must admit that sometimes, these two girls’ journeys can be a bit amusing to watch and they definitely go to some crazy places. The direction by Everton and Meek feels fluid and it’s incredibly apparent that they’re talented people. I just wish they would’ve done a bit more with this story because honestly, it feels like it was stretched super thin.

If you wanted to, you could really have this story be over a few minutes because of just how simple it is. That’s not to say the movie was doomed from the beginning – there are a ton of excellent movies out there with hugely simplistic concepts – but the difference is that this movie barely finds anything entertaining to do along the way. Characters don’t get fleshed out as much as they should here and the story lacks any real depth which is quite a shame because this could’ve been quite a heartfelt, feel-good comedy but instead, the only thing it made me do was shrug my shoulders and want to watch something else immediately after.