| Two brothers lost their mother when they are small children, and their father was mostly on the road in a vain effort to achieve fame as a third baseman. When the father became too old to play, he retired to México, watched a lot of baseball on television, including his son Terry’s big-league career, and died. In Along for the Ride, directed by Bryan W. Simon, the two sons arrive in México, summoned by cantina owner María (played by Jenny Gago) to bury their father, whom she has placed in the walk-in freezer until their arrival. As the tagline of the film understates, “A car. Two brothers. A dead dad. And some baseball.” Although both sons are single, they are very different. Good-looking Terry (played by Randall Batinkoff), to get his father’s attention, played baseball and became a pitcher until his rotator cuff became so injured that he could no longer play; although he amassed a million, and slept with a lot of women on the road, he now does not know how to spend his money or what to do with his life. Grubby Vance (played by Dylan Haggerty) never got his father’s attention, became a letter carrier in Duluth, learned Spanish, and vacationed in China, Egypt, India, and elsewhere to enjoy unique experiences in other cultures. Vance takes a bus to a desert junction in México where one roadsign indicates the distance to Villa Tristana, another to Río Terdido. (Presumably a misspelling of House of Sadness and Lost River, the actual film location is the Mojave desert.) Terry drives his beat-up Cadillac, picks up Vance at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere, and they ride to the cantina where his father’s body is being kept on ice. Throughout most of their time together, Terry berates Vance for not amounting to anything; Vance accepts the negativism up to a point, evidently realizing that his brother is really projecting autobiographical criticisms onto him, and occasionally tells Terry off. On seeing the body, Terry becomes sentimental, but not Vance, who starts to dig a hole for the corpse. Terry objects that a proper burial is needed, so he puts the corpse in the back seat of the convertible, and the two drive day and night to find a mortician. During the drive, they alternate as drivers. The one not driving dreams of a conversation with their father, Jake Cowens (played by J. E. Freeman). Ultimately, when they cannot find the mortician and become tired of the search, they bury their father in the desert. María, who has been shortcut from time to time into the film footage during the brothers’ wandering, is finally at peace after the burial. Their mourning completed, they stop fighting with each other, show brotherly affection, and Terry then decides to visit Egypt as if to acknowledge that his brother Vance has taught him that life has more meaning when one humbly looks outward. The movie, based on a stage play of the same title by Randall Wheatly, ends with Terry saying “Weird, huh?” Along for the Ride shows the hollowness of father-son and sibling relations based on narcissism, pretense, and pride, telling us that there is no substitute for love. MH |