Before We Go

Radius Studios

Before We Go is marketed as a drama, a comedy and a romance, and it marks Chris Evan’s debut as a director. When the film opens we see Nick Vaughan (Evans) sitting on the floor at Grand Central Station, fiddling with his trumpet. No, like an actual trumpet. Get your mind out of the gutter. Brooke Dalton (Alice Eve) goes running by, dropping her phone and breaking it. She makes it to the platform, but misses the final train of the night and is clearly devastated by this.

Nick catches up with her and hands her the broken phone. We learn that Brooke’s purse has been stolen and all she has now is a train ticket and a busted phone. Brooke needs to get home to Boston before her husband gets back from a business trip around 8 a.m. FOR REASONS. It’s 1:30 now so that doesn’t leave her a lot of time.

Nick and his trumpet (still an actual trumpet) offer to help her out. He’s kind of broke and his phone is dead, and he’s hanging out in Grand Central Station because he’s avoiding a party his ex is at.

The rest of the movie vacillates between humorous and heartfelt as Nick and Brooke have misadventures throughout the city at night trying to get her enough cash to make it to Boston by morning.

Elyse: This is a movie about two ridiculously attractive people, one of whom is my not-so-secret crush, Chris Evans, and their wacky adventures in NYC one night.

CarrieS: I’d also summarize this movie by saying that this is a bittersweet romantic comedy set in New York City and starring two golden retriever puppies.

RHG: Is it bittersweet? Is it a comedy? I don’t think it’s even that easy to categorize. It’s a play, really, about two people and a connection and the circumstances surrounding that connection almost don’t matter that much.

CarrieS: I totally agree, actually. I expect this will be marketed as “romantic comedy” – but it’s not laugh out loud constantly, and it’s not dark and angsty like a drama – it’s really hard to place.  Which I liked.

Elyse: I think the romantic comedy part comes purely from how charismatic Evans is. And yes, I know I’m deeply in love with his Dorito-shaped ass, but you have to admit he does a good job of rescuing the damsel in distress while still coming off as genuine. And he’s clearly at a crossroads himself. I think maybe that’s the best way to sum this up–a 12 hour period with two people who meet at a huge crossroads in their lives.

CarrieS: I’m a huge sucker for “One Crazy Night” stories. As a director, I felt Evans didn’t do anything super or daring or ground-breaking, but he did a great job with understanding the appeal of the material – two pretty people in a pretty place being charming and adorable as hell.

RHG: As a first time outing, I think he did a really good job. I know he has said he wants to move more behind the camera – he finds the publicity stuff that goes along with the acting business to be REALLY stressful – and I’m interested to see what kind of director he matures into. (I bet there’s some ridiculous mention in the “making of” stuff about “making New York another entire character” which is what EVERYONE SAYS about making movies in new York, but there’s a certain amount of things that only work in New York.)

Elyse: Yeah, I mean you couldn’t shoot this movie in Des Moines because everyone would be in bed and everything would be closed. In order for them to crash a party, bust in on some purse-stealing huslters, get a pyschic reading, and go to a reception you’d need to be in a big city. I don’t think I felt like New York was another character, but I did like it all took place at night where you get to see another side of the city. He makes a comment like “I hear Central Park is really safe this time of night” and I liked that they didn’t go with a super clean, touristy version of New York.

CarrieS: They couldn’t set it in San Francisco or LA or Portland, because while not everyone has a car, everyone knows someone who does, and I seriously kept waiting for him to say, “Hey, I’ll just drive you!  IN MY CAR!”

I felt the city was a character in the same sense that it’s a character in Manhattan (the movie). It’s sort of a love letter to New York without doing the usual tourist stops. It was the Chris Evans New York – super charming, really nice to look at, and sort of scruffy.

RHG: One of the things that really worked in the direction that it wasn’t padded- everything there was there for a reason, and it moved along, but not too fast. It’s a delightful 90 minutes (give or take) and Evans let the story tell itself. That’s not an easy skill to learn, and far too easy to second-and-third guess. (How many of us have over-editted something we’ve been working on? Everyone one of us.)

Elyse: Right. I wouldn’t have guessed that Evans directed this because it didn’t feel like an actor directing his first movie. I’ve noticed more with TV shows (Mentalist I’m looking at you) that when the lead actor directs an episode it’s very apparent because they try things that maybe don’t gel with what they’re supposed to be doing, like let’s take a shot of a doe standing in a field for 30 seconds because it represents something! And the audience is like, I don’t understand why this is happening.

I guess I could tell he directed in the sense that Brooke doesn’t have sex with his character, and quite frankly any other director would have been like “Yeah, she’s going to have to sex with the guy that looks like Chris Evans. Gotta take your shirt off dude. Sorry.”

CarrieS: I actually thought one of the challenges he had to handle was a) how not to make his character seem creepy or predatory and b) how not to show that he looks like Captain America, who does not look like a human guy. I noticed he hardly ever took off his coat and I’m thinking that’s why. And I thought he did a great job (as did Alice Eve who showed an appropriate level of mistrust, knowing why it would not be a good idea for her to head off into the city with him). That’s two challenges – but I think they overlap a little.

RHG: It would not surprise me to learn that this was originally conceived as a play–two people with a super-objective of “Brooke needs to get to Boston by 8 am” and the mini-objectives in service to that objective, is straight out of acting and play-writing 101. Throw in various complications of why the goal isn’t achievable and this is basically a perfectly structured story. I loved the meeting with the psychic, and the rando crashing of the wedding reception, and Chris’ buddy who said he sold a kidney to get them the money.

I don’t think this is gonna win anyone any awards, but it’s a delightful movie.

CarrieS: It’s a really slight movie, but it works because Evans embraces it for what it is. He doesn’t throw in arty shots of a deer or a sudden action scene or some shit – it’s just a charming story about charming people in a charming place. Like a lovely little dream. I love movies about connection and Alice and Chris both has charisma and chemistry like whoa so it worked beautifully. A good date movie, or a good “Ugh I’m so stressed out I just want to chill” movie.

Elyse: I think what this movie really highlighted was that Evans is actually a really good actor. He gets cast in the super-hero movies like Captain America and Fantastic Four and he gets kinda beefcaked up for romantic comedies, but the reality is he’s capable of doing more than that.

In this movie we saw that his character, Nick, was in a really vulnerable space and had been for like six years. I personally think six years is a super long time to not get over someone, but I’ve also never been in that position.

So it really subverts the romantic comedy thing in the end.

RHG: I have hopes for these two kids to figure things out, but they both know they have to deal with their current life before moving on to the next thing. Maybe it is true love. Maybe it’s true love right now, or in a few months. But the potential is there.

Who knows? But it doesn’t matter because they got to the end of the chapter, and the future is the future.

Elyse: So it seems like we all really enjoyed this movie. What would you give it? I was thinking an A. It was exactly what it needed to be and like RHG said, they kept the narrative really tight and the two main actors nailed it.

CarrieS:  I think a A works. It’s hard because what’s the curve?  Like – a movie that just wrecks you and totally changes the way you think is an A, and this is not that movie. But it delivers exactly what it promises. It does it’s job really effectively. And I keep thinking about it, which is a good sign.

RHG: Yup, it’s an A. I have no regrets about the money or time spent on it, though being able to watch it at home and not yell at someone about thier cell phone was nice.  😛

Carrie: Oh yeah, this is totally a couch movie. You need a blanky, some popcorn, cocoa, and maybe some cats so you can get the pure, full, immersive cozy experience.