/13H7aiwQsiEDok54b1OFDTz7u1X.jpg
Drama

Good One

-

On a weekend backpacking trip in the Catskills, 17-year-old Sam contends with the competing egos of her father and his oldest friend.

Release Date : 2024-08-09

Language :English

Adult : false

Status : Released

Production Company : International Pigeon ProductionSmudge FilmsTinygiantBaird Street Pictures

Production Country : United States of America

Alternative Titles :

Cast

Lily Collias

Character Name : Sam

Original Name : Lily Collias

Gender : Female

James Le Gros

Character Name : Chris

Original Name : James Le Gros

Gender : Male

Danny McCarthy

Character Name : Matt

Original Name : Danny McCarthy

Gender : Male

Sumaya Bouhbal

Character Name : Jessie

Original Name : Sumaya Bouhbal

Gender : Female

Diana Irvine

Character Name : Casey

Original Name : Diana Irvine

Gender : Female

Sam Lanier

Character Name : Zach

Original Name : Sam Lanier

Gender : Male

Eric Yates

Character Name : Andy

Original Name : Eric Yates

Gender : Male

Peter McNally

Character Name : Jake

Original Name : Peter McNally

Gender : Male

Julian Grady

Character Name : Dylan

Original Name : Julian Grady

Gender : Male

Becca Brooks Morrin

Character Name : Restaurant Server

Original Name : Becca Brooks Morrin

Gender : Female

Valentine Black

Character Name : Val

Original Name : Valentine Black

Gender : Male

Sarah Wilson

Character Name : Janie

Original Name : Sarah Wilson

Gender : Male

Reviews

C

CinemaSerf

@Geronimo1967

2025-05-18

I think maybe son “Dylan” (a fleeting appearance from Julian Grady) might have had the right idea when he decides to opt out of his dad’s camping trip with his best friend and his daughter. Seems that “Matt” (Danny McCarthy) is having father-son issues amidst a divorce after he strayed with someone quite a bit younger. His travelling companions are lifelong buddy (James Le Gros) and teenage “Sammy” (Lily Collias) who have a more typical relationship. She has known “Matt” for years and for a while their trip, trekking through the beautiful Catskill mountains, seems to pass off amiably enough. They even meet some fellow travellers for some who has been where grandstanding; the tents seems to go up without any slapstick and there’s a little teasing about the nature of her relationship with “Jessie”. “Matt” however, begins to feel a bit melancholy though as he gradually beings to appreciate that his family is disintegrating and after a revealing conversation with “Sammy” and an even more revealing and wholly inadequate one she has with her father afterwards, it becomes pretty clear that she is not without her own problems and her father has quite a bit of growing up of his own to do. It’s a very slowly paced drama this, with most of the dialogue delivered as naturally occurring conversation. That works to an extent as sentences are left unfinished and inferences are made using facial expressions, but what is missing here is any sense of development of these people. We are left to make too many assumptions which rather lets the thing down as the story heads to it’s crunch moment. That rather comes out of the blue and seems contrived to make the very point the auteur wants to make despite it not really fitting the profile or behaviour of the characters we had hitherto been walking through the wilderness with. I suppose, without giving the game away, I just don’t agree with the fundamental message that the latter stages of the film seem to be trying to convey here and so was ultimately a bit disappointed that what started off as an light-hearted, quite wittily scripted, observation of family became something a little subliminally sinister for the sake of it. It’s a gorgeous film to watch and Collias delivers engagingly, too, but films like this risk fuelling a growing misconception of an opportunistic or even predatory male stereotype that most men simply won’t accept and isn’t actually true.