Boundaries

July 20, 20185 min

Coming home from a vacation and traveling all day, I couldn’t think of a better movie to see than one about a road trip. The reason I feel that way is because in essence the movie felt like an extension of my personal trip, although Christopher Plummer is not as cool as my dad. The good thing for me is I got to stop at a rest stop which means I came home for a few hours and got to rest before my next trip, this one had me being a passenger in another family’s road adventures in Boundaries.

To say Laura Jaconi (Vera Farmiga) has problems might be an understatement. Having to deal with her daddy issues her whole life has manifested itself with her rescuing every dog and cat that comes her way. In the middle of her mission she also has her son Henry (Lewis MacDougall) to worry about as he is not quite fitting in at school with his own daddy issues, meaning his is nowhere around. Laura is making it through life by setting boundaries, the most important one being that she ignores her father every time he tries to call. When Henry gets kicked out of school she breaks down and calls him to ask for money for Henry so that he can attend private school. Lucky for Laura her father Jack (Christopher Plummer) needs help as well, as he just got kicked out of an assisted living home. Jack agrees to give her money, and Laura gets her sister to take in their father, the only flaw in her plan is that she has to drive Jack down to Los Angeles. So they all pile in his car, her, Jack, Henry, and a bunch of animals and they head down the P.C.H. where Jack makes some stops along the way to sell some greenery and hopefully becomes the father Laura always needed.

To say a movie about a grandfather who enlists his grandson to help him sell pot doesn’t peak my interest would be a lie. When you add the cast then you really got my attention, the kind that Boundaries doesn’t keep once the film starts. Writer/Director Shana Feste does some things right, mainly getting her cast, but the film only boarders on entertaining some of the time. The parts she gets right is mainly provided by Plummer who has the “I am older so I don’t care who I offend” down perfectly and provides some good one liners. Farmiga is also at times charming but there are other times where things don’t feel right about her performance, something I don’t think I have ever said about her before. When you head into ‘the road trip movie’ that feels the same as so many, the aging actors who you love, but don’t see in anything anymore, and a whole lot of special animals and you have an almost ok movie, that runs out of gas before it makes it there. This movie though has an audience who will love it, but for most of us this is one trip that is not worth taking.

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