Dir: Emer Reynolds. Starring: Olivia Colman, Charlie Reid, Lochlann O Mearáin, Olwen Fouéré, Tommy Tiernan. 15, 93 minutes.
According to Joyride, a real toothache of a road-trip comedy, all that’s needed to change a woman’s mind on the topic of motherhood is a light case of kidnapping. Documentarian Emer Reynolds’s first fiction feature is, regrettably, a textbook demonstration of how easily the dogged pursuit of sentimentality can insult those it intends to woo. In the process, it ignores the multifarious realities of womanhood by arguing that a reluctance to have children could really just be a case of “first day at the office” nerves. Joyride isn’t anti-choice propaganda. But it does stray dangerously close.
