Far From Home

This is actually a really good movie that I'd never heard about before this movie challenge, and it's annoying and puzzling to me, because the movie has a bunch of well-known character actors and actresses in a serviceable plot with some cool twists and turns and I just don't get why some movies get blathered all over while movies like this slip by the wayside. It seriously pisses me off (almost as much as that damn movie poster pisses me off, because it gives away WAAAYYY too much of the plot for my liking...hello genuises in the marketing department, it's called a "twist ending," not a "we already telegraphed the twist on the poster" ending). I'm happy to have this space to inform people about movies like this one, which deserve a second look.

In this movie, Drew Barrymore plays a sullen almost-14 year old girl who is supposed to be on a road trip connecting with her estranged father, but she's mostly pining for home and wishing he weren't such a clueless dipwad. I feel justified in making that assertion, because seriously, he does some of the dumbest things I've ever seen a character do in a movie, including getting them stranded in the middle of nowhere in a town where everyone seems creepy and violent and angry all the time and all the local gas stations are out of gas so there's nothing to do but wait for the delivery truck to come (I'm not sure this was a believable premise even back in 1986, and you mean to tell me he NEVER noticed they were running low on gas until it was too late and they ran out? Really?)

Once the father and daughter are stranded, they wind up renting a trailer in a trailer park owned by a creepy, abusive, angry lady who is one of the worst parents in history, and the daughter catches the eyes of not one but two creepy local boys. the dad should be protecting her from these guys, but he's too busy shacking up with a woman he meets at the trailer park who is also stranded, so his young teen daughter is left to roam free and get menaced and maybe dragged off and murdered while father of the year isn't paying attention. This movie is like an instruction manual for what NOT to do as a parent.

Despite the dimbulb moves of the main characters, I enjoyed this movie and I enjoyed seeing so many character actors and actresses (hello Richard Masur, and Anthony Rapp, and Jennifer Tilly!) and the story was cool and twisty, and even though I figured out what was going on pretty early in the movie, there were still some nasty surprises in store for me. Definitely a fun watch.