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Movies & TV Movies & TV Reviews

Before We Go

BEFORE WE GO (Chris Evans). 95 minutes. Opens Friday (September 4). See listings. Rating: NN


I like Chris Evans an awful lot. He’s an underrated actor, both in the Marvel movies and in projects as diverse as Snowpiercer, What’s Your Number and Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. Seriously, check those out sometime. When he brought his directorial debut to TIFF last year, I went in with high hopes.

Unfortunately, Before We Go is not worthy of its director/star. It’s a middling nothing of a movie about a musician (Evans) who helps a stranger (Alice Eve) cope when her purse is stolen and she finds herself stranded in New York City for the night.

What’s most striking about the picture is that it took four writers (including Rain Man’s Ronald Bass) to come up with the undercooked script, which ignores obvious solutions to the characters’ plights (police stations, credit card help lines, pay phones) to keep them knocking around Lower Manhattan on a series of personal quests.

But ultimately, Before We Go fails simply because it takes two very charming actors – one of whom actually directed the damn thing – and gives them not a single thing to do that isn’t forced or clichéd.

Evans settles for a superficial George Clooney impression, and Eve never figures out how to believably shift her character’s desperation and panic into the quasi-romantic buzz her role requires. It’s very disappointing.    

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