RIDING THE WAVE
Helen Hunt wrote, directed and stars in Ride, with Luke Wilson as her surf instructor,
Ride
(out of 4) Starring Helen Hunt, Brenton Thwaites, Luke Wilson and David Zayas. Directed by Helen Hunt. 93 minutes. Opens Friday at the Carlton, VOD May 12. 14A
“I got a ride.”
Helen Hunt delivers those four words in comedic drama Ride — she also wrote the screenplay and directs — with precise timing, a hint of a sly, knowing look and a slight cheekiness that makes for a pretty much perfect screen moment.
It’s the other words in her script that curiously let Hunt down and it means Ride often struggles more than it smoothly rides the waves.
As Jackie, Hunt plays an A-type helicopter mom, who finds a new approach to living and parenting — with some added benefits from laidback instructor Luke Wilson — by learning to surf.
Occasionally engaging, Ride suffers from being desperate to please, overwrought and overwritten with sitcom-style shenanigans backed up by a chirpy score. These moments clash jarringly with dramatic scenes that signal abrupt shifts in tone, although Hunt does get it right in the end with a quietly effective finale.
A second-time director ( Then She Found Me), Hunt’s ego is healthy enough to have no qualms about letting herself look ridiculous onscreen as an arrogant 50-something Gidget who assumes she can brain power her way to surfing. Equally game whether she’s being pounded by waves or doing beach face plants, Ride would have benefitted from Hunt being similarly willing to take risks in directing.
The best aspect of Hunt’s triple- play is in her portrayal of Jackie, a New York literary editor and single mom whose 20-year-old son, Angelo (Brenton Thwaites of Maleficent), aspires to be a writer. As proof of their strained relationship, he calls her “Jackie” and bellows demands for her help in finishing a short story in an awkward, overly written initial scene.
While on a California visit with his dad and his shiny new family, Angelo is inspired to try a new tack by a beach bum Kerouac (Callum Keith Rennie), deciding he’s dropping out of school to surf and write.
Shocked Jackie immediately heads west to spy on him, which neatly confirms everything about her that annoys her kid. How can she understand his new path via the waves breaking by the Santa Monica pier when “this is something you could never do?”
Of course, she can surf, Jackie huffs. Irritated and defiant after her first attempts fail (aided by limo driver Ramon, played by Dexter’s David Zayas), she hires philosophical surf instructor Ian (Wilson), figuring she can master the board after one lesson. Wilson is the right kind of actor for handsome and low-key Ian. At age 37, he has enough world-weary patience to let his hyper pupil make all the mistakes she wants while hop- ing she absorbs some lessons about patience along with swallowing a few buckets of ocean.
There’s joy in watching these two connect — and seeing a believable spark evolve between a 50-something woman and a (slightly) younger man, although he is staring 40 in the face and it’s hardly a stretch.
But by Hollywood standards, where that kind of age gap between an older leading man and a younger woman is always expected, with another 10 years for good measure, it’s gratifying to see a flip in perspective.
Turns out, Jackie has good reason for her parental vigilance but Thwaites’s character never earns our sympathy. He sometimes struggles with tone and occasionally stomps all over Hunt, coming across as a bit of a whiner. Hunt, who did much of her own surfing in Ride, is even more impressive for her comic physicality. She makes scenes of struggling into a wetsuit or getting stoned — hardly new things to milk for laughs onscreen — very funny indeed.
Nominated for an Oscar as soccer mom/sex surrogate in The Sessions (2012), it’s good to see Hunt in another leading role. Not only is there life after 30, 40, 50 and beyond for actresses, audiences will embrace them if given a chance.