At the beginning of Amazon’s cutesy father-daughter tale Don’t Make Me Go, a voiceover tell us: “You’re not gonna like the way this story ends, but I think you’re gonna like this story.” Almost two hours later and the prophecy was only half-correct. For the way that the film ends is a genuine text-your-friends-and-spoil-it-for-them-in-caps shocker, for all of the very worst reasons, a cheap, emotionally manipulative head-scratcher of a twist that leaves one with a sour taste in the mouth that lingers. But even before the dramatic left turn, all the way over the cliff and into flames, this ho-hum road trip comedy drama was already hard to like, an unspecific sitcom of eye-rolls and finger-wagging.
It’s unsurprisingly the work of an ex-This is Us writer, a network soap of shameless string and rug pulls, and perhaps ardent fans might find something here to mope over in that show’s recent absence. But for the rest of us, a film that should be radiating warmth and humanity is in fact surprisingly cold, almost factory-made, a drama about the messiness of family that feels far too tidy. The often under-utilised actor John Cho at least makes the most of a rare lead role, echoing similar single dad energy from 2018’s devilishly entertaining cyber-thriller Searching. In Don’t Make Me Go, there’s nothing as nefarious pulling him and his daughter apart but, ultimately, something equally life-threatening.
