Go

I remember seeing the poster for this back in the day. For some reason, the angle, the title, the general vibe of it screamed of a tone-deaf marketing ploy by clueless Baby Boomers trying to capture the Gen-X vibe. I never bothered to see it, and for almost 30 years, I forgot about it. Then I saw it on a list of overlooked 90's movies, and it was described as a sort-of teenage Pulp Fiction, and that intrigued me. So I put it on the watchlist. And, yeah, that's it. I mean, that's really it, for better and worse. It's about a day and a half in the lives of five people, and their intertwining and diverging chapters are told individually like chapters. We see how Ronna and Simon make a deal to swap a shift so Ronna can make some extra money and Simon can go to Vegas for the first time, and from there, the movie follows Ronna for about a half an hour. When her story reaches a stopping point, it flips to Simon, and so on. Go has a lot of energy to it and fun dialogue and, as contrived as the sequence of events are and the way they intersect, it's a fun ride. What holds it back, though, is its transparent unwillingness to commit to the illusion of its life-and-death stakes. For as much as this movie wants to make the viewer believe the protagonists are in grave peril, that feeling never actually comes through the screen. Perhaps it's the all-too-90's feel of the movie. Perhaps it's taking the Pulp Fiction formula and building it around young people. Or perhaps it's just the overall irreverent flippancy of the movie. Whatever the case, Go's stakes lack any credibility whatsoever. The Goonies feels more life-and-death than this. And that's about it. It's not as intelligent as Pulp Fiction, but conversely, it's also not up its own ass with profundity. Pulp Fiction wants to be Art. Go just wants to be a movie. Neither approach is bad. Go is just easier to sit down and watch, whereas Pulp Fiction has this whole cottage industry of takes and analysis. Go doesn't inspire analysis; it couldn't inspire analysis. It is what it is, and that's all that it is. It's energetic, it's interesting, and it doesn't reach for something it can't grasp. I honestly don't have much to say about it, and I just finished watching it. It's just that kind of movie. I probably would've been more into it in 1999, but even now, I'm glad I finally saw it.