Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Emer Reynolds
Starring: Olivia Colman, Charlie Reid, Lochlann Ó Mearáin, Olwen Fouéré
Few storytelling formats are as attractive to filmmakers as the road
movie. With characters travelling on literal and metaphorical journeys,
it provides the ideal setup for character development. The trouble with
road movies is that very few of the world's nations are large enough to
accommodate them. Ireland, the setting for director
Emer Reynolds' Joyride, is so small that it can be traversed by car in the time it takes to
consume the average superhero movie. While the country that provides its
backdrop may not be very broad, the humour in
Joyride certainly is. Every aspect of Reynolds'
increasingly grating comedy drama is pitched higher than the wails of
the screaming infant at its centre.
If a movie is titled Joyride and its protagonist is named
Joy (Olivia Colman – how??? why???), you know you're not in for
much in the way of nuance. Having prematurely given birth to a baby girl
just a week ago, Joy intends dropping the infant off with her sister.
Joy isn't the maternal type, or is she? Maybe she just needs a male
figure to mansplain how motherhood is the essence of womanhood.
That male figure arrives in the diminutive form of 13-year-old
scallywag Mully (Charlie Reid). Having recently lost his mother
to cancer, Mully takes off in a stolen taxi with the money raised by a
local pub for a charity battling the disease. He means well, however, as
he's planning to give the money to the charity rather than see it fall
into the hands of his ne'er do well father (Lochlann Ó Mearáin).
Mully is shocked to find he has two passengers in Joy and her unwanted
newborn.
It's at this early point that Joyride begins to test your
patience. Rather than immediately extracting herself from the situation,
Joy is perfectly happy to allow a 13-year-old boy to drive her to the
ferry terminal. At first it seems as though Joy may be mentally
unstable, perhaps suffering from post-partum depression, but she appears
to be fully in control of her faculties.
As Joy and Mully travel the backroads of County Kerry, this odd couple
begins to bond, with the former learning how to be a mother courtesy of
the latter, who seems to know more about the workings of infants than
the average pediatrician. At one point he even teaches her how to
breastfeed!!! In the current social climate, the idea that a movie
written and directed by women would proffer the considerably outdated
idea that a woman's primary purpose in life is to become a mother is
baffling. That a pre-pubescent boy teaches an adult woman how to become
a maternal figure is the icing on this sickeningly saccharine cake. With
its amateurish feel and lecturing tone, Joyride often
resembles an Irish version of one of those Christian propaganda movies
so popular in the US, and fans of such movies will no doubt appreciate
its pro-life message.
I'm not sure how Colman was roped into this ghastly affair, but even
her talents can't save the film. We're told Joy is a solicitor, but she
speaks like a council estate stereotype, all fecks and bejaysuses. Reid
is clearly very talented, but it's impossible to buy him as a working
class scoundrel – he gives the sort of overly polished performance that
suggests he came off the production line at the Irish wing of the Disney
factory. It doesn't help that he's burdened with dialogue no 13-year-old
Irish boy would ever come out with, and it often sounds like he's
speaking certain words for the first time in his young life.
Road movies are usually memorable for the various eccentric characters
their protagonists meet on their journey, often teaching our heroes a
life lesson or two. Here the life lessons are literally taught, with
characters sitting down beside our lead duo and dispensing tired wisdom.
By the third time a Robin Redbreast appears as a metaphor, you'll be
throwing rotten fruit at the screen. In the year that gave us the
transformative
The Quiet Girl, Joyride is an unwelcome return to the dark days when
Irish movies were made not for Irish audiences but for tourists with
misty-eyed misconceptions about the Emerald Isle. Stop the car, I want
to get out.
