Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Along for the Ride’ on Netflix, a Late-Teens Rom-Dram Boasting a Winning Performance by Newcomer Emma Pasarow

YA hearts break and mend at a rapid pace on Netflix, which offers deposits another teen rom-com-dram, Along for the Ride, in the pantheon next to all the Kissing Booths and To All the Boyses. This is the first of a three-movie deal with novelist Sarah Dessen (whose books That Summer and Someone Like You became the 2003 Mandy Moore vehicle How to Deal), and a career jumpstart for Emma Pasarow, in her first major feature-film role. Pasarow’s love interest is played by Belmont Cameli of the Saved By the Bell reboot, and they get support from a trio of wily vets, Dermot Mulroney, Andie MacDowell and Kate Bosworth. Will this seaside-summer saga melt our hearts like a popsicle on the beach or just leave us in the deep freeze? Let’s find out.

ALONG FOR THE RIDE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Auden (Pasarow) is kind of a buzzkill. She just graduated and instead of joining her classmates as they climb the school bell tower and TP it, she points out, “as a transgressive act, it’s faulty,” and is pretty much asked to sit this one out. It’s not the only one she’s sat out. She’s a star student and one hell of a reader of books, so parties and proms aren’t her style – although maybe she wants them to be? She’s so like socias awks. Her bookishness stems from her parents, who are divorced. Mom Victoria (MacDowell) is a highfalutin professor gold-medaling in passive-aggressiveness. Dad Robert (Mulroney) is a novelist with a new, younger wife, Heidi (Bosworth), and they have a nearly brand-new baby together. Auden – as in W.H., the poet, whose verse famously enlivened Four Weddings and a Funeral – turned down Victoria’s offer to be her research assistant before heading to college, instead choosing to spend the summer at Robert and Heidi’s Atlantic beach house – music by Beach House, not a joke, check the credits – and do the books for Heidi’s seaside shoppe, which totally deserves the extra “pe.”

So Auden fires up the voiceover (it’s always voiceover in movies adapting YA novels) and hops in the Volvo (it’s always a Volvo for the offspring of intellectuals in movies) and heads to Colby Beach. Mom’s bitter and feels rejected, and Dad’s too busy novelizing up his own ass to even have lunch with his daughter. Heidi is in that new-mom phase where everything’s bleary and on the verge of nervous breakdowndom because she never gets any damn sleep. Auden’s goal is to maybe try on a different personality or two and maybe make some new friends in this small, boardwalk-and-chocolatiers kind of town. Cute locale, the ocean, ice cream cones, the omnipresent smell of guano and fish guts – you’d give it a shot too.

She tries the local youth party spot, The Tip (hey nice name there), and facemashes with a doucheboy before she fully understands his doucheness. Strike one. She starts work at the shoppe and doesn’t fit in with the little-shorts-and-dance-parties employee trio of Leah (Genevieve Hannelius), Esther (Samia Finnerty) and Maggie (Laura Kariuki), mostly because doucheboy is Maggie’s ex, and she saw them making out and Maggie’s still smarting. Strike two. Heidi is super nice (no, really! Best adult in the movie!) but harried and Dad is Writing Don’t Bother Him and Mom leaves guilt-churning voicemails that end in “c’est la vie, c’est la vie.” UGH. Is this gonna work out?

Auden is a night owl who, in lieu of being social, finds a quiet spot to read under a light on the dock. And what should appear but a wind-in-his-hair boy on a bike, Eli (Cameli). Who-whooo is Eli? Another night owl who shows her a secret hangout in the backroom of the laundromat and teaches her how to play Connect Four. Things are looking up. The shoppe girls warm up to Auden and bring her along to beach bonfires and hot dog parties (as in frankenfurters, clean it up there pal) where nobody ever drinks alcohol! Imagine that! And she and Eli hang out and do cutesy shit to the point where we’re yelling KISS HER YOU DIP at the screen. But this is a movie about life’s ups and downs so some of the up has gotta come down, doesn’t it?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The crashing waves and salty airs of Along for the Ride bring to mind that Miley/Nicolas Sparks beach movie, The Last Song, albeit with less music, hamfisted turtle metaphors, and death.

Performance Worth Watching: We have a winner in Pasarow, who finds her character’s interesting, nebulous core and sets up shop in the little spot, where she’s allowed to be charismatic, charming and relatable, and not an off-the-rack YA Movie Girl.

Memorable Dialogue: “What is this, vertical checkers?” says Auden, who was apparently too busy reading POMES to play board games as a kid

Sex and Skin: Smashyface sessions; bikini’d teens.

Our Take: Along for the Ride is a nice, easy-drinking movie that makes you wish you could spend a little more time with these people. Well, the young people anyway, who are given the opportunity to grow on screen in an earnest, believable fashion; the adult characters tend to adhere to the same old cliches, wet-blanketing the movie a bit. And then the film flips the script for the third act, when Dad and Mom and Stepmom act like real complex people instead of caricatures, while Pasarow grapples with an unwieldy never-learned-to-ride-a-bike metaphor and Cameli does his damnedest to deliver a mawkish, tearful little speech. Those poor kids, facing such mighty screenplay adversity. Such an unnecessary, avoidable calamity.

But that’s not a damning torpedo to the hull here. As much as Along for the Ride insists upon indulging a handful of weary genre chestnuts, director Sofia Alvarez (who scripted two To All the Boyses) smooths things over with genial seaside summertime vibes, and smartly leans into her star, nurturing a thoughtful, smart performance from Pasarow. The movie balances real-lifey-type plot fodder with enough teenagery dramatic triteness to keep a few generations of viewers watching and hoping for the best for these characters. Alvarez does her darndest to shrug off some bits of formula and not quite subscribe to the Happily Ever After Fallacy, suggesting that life will go on just fine for these not-irreversibly dysfunctional people.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Along for the Ride isn’t the most exciting movie – no blindsiding uberdrama or wacky hijinks here, for better or worse, mostly for better. It feels enough like reality to render it worth the investment of time and emotional interest.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.