A lone woman gets off a plane, trudges through a buzzing airport, and catches a cab. You don’t need to know she’s landed at JFK International Airport to know she’s a New Yorker, because within three minutes of the opening of Christy Hall’s “Daddio,” that lone woman has decisively turned off the annoying in-cab television that primarily exists to orient out-of-towners to what’s happening in the city (Broadway shows, weather forecasts, etc.). In that single moment, we learn more about who she is than we do during the interminable cab ride (and film) that follows.
The one thing we never learn: her name. Instead, star and producer Dakota Johnson is listed in the credits simply as “Girlie,” even though no one ever refers to her as such during the claustrophobic (less for her, more for the audience) outing that unspools over the next 101 minutes. And who would bother to call her by her actual name? The only other people in this story are cab driver Clark (Sean Penn, whose character gets an entire subplot noodling on what he would call himself if he had the choice) and the man she’s having an affair with, simply listed as “L” in her phone.
Hall, who also wrote the film‘s script (it was originally envisioned as a stage play, and still holds on to all the worst impulses that would come with that), perhaps believes that ascribing that sort of anonymity to her characters serves the bigger swings she’s taken in penning a screenplay ostensibly about the power of connection between two strangers stuck together for a brief period of time. Take away the things that make them unique, strip them down, and something more profound might emerge. Not here.
Instead, as Girlie (ugh) and Clark settle into their ride — much of it set to a bracingly overdramatic score from Dickon Hinchcliffe, all of it impressively designed to fit inside Clark’s beat up cab — the two start to test each other. Clark muses about the influx of “fucking apps” into everyday life, as Girlie purposely ignores her phone. They look at each other through mirrors and the plastic divider that sits between the front and back seats (Kristi Zea’s production design is one of the film’s rare highlights), stopping and starting small talk. Clark eases up a bit, while Girlie pecks out a few naughty texts to “L” in her phone (her lover is terribly bad at the sexy stuff, all misspellings and demands to see Girlie’s “pink”; there is zero romance anywhere in this film, and “L” makes that clear from his first blue-bubbled appearance).
Gruff Clark is a certain kind of guy — you can imagine that, in the best of times, he considers himself some sort of warrior poet — and he finds a willing target/compatriot in Girlie. Their testing pays off, giving way to something that feels like emotional and mutually assured destruction: they start telling each other things. That Girlie has daddy issues galore isn’t revelatory, and neither is the armchair pop psychology it allows Clark to unfurl at her at will and at random. When they get stuck in a traffic jam — all the better for Hall to waaayyyyyy stretcccchhhh ouuuuuutttt this limp gimmick — things get serious.
Eventually, the two turn their discussion into a game of oneupmanship to see who can reveal the most personal stories and secrets to the other as they careen toward Manhattan. Most of them are, tediously enough, of the sexual variety. Girlie’s affair with “L” is perhaps the most interesting thing about her (and it’s not at all interesting), while Clark’s musings about the differences between men and women (also tedious, also uninteresting) and what it means for a woman to be a “pig in the bedroom” frame, if not his biggest character moments, but the moments in which Penn really gets to bloviate.
The frisson of sexual attraction between the two of them is the only engine the can drive the majority of these revelations, as many of them hinge on their own exploits and the sense they’re trying to draw the other into a sensual web. In practice, however, that attraction and the game it lets them play only serves to show how empty these two really are. It’s queasy and uncomfortable, and despite the inherent “relatability” of this premise, most audience members will likely walk away feeling that the last thing they’d ever want to be is like Girlie or Clark.
Occasionally, both Johnson and Penn — unquestionably talented performers — nearly get “Daddio” back on track. Despite the concept-heavy nature of this film, quieter moments are better: A glance from Johnson, a grimace from Penn, the sharing of a story that actually feels rooted in emotion, but these highlights are few and far between. Instead, “Daddio” grinds its way toward an unearned, maudlin conclusion that seems to exist for an entirely different (and better?) film. This particular ride? It’s not worth the fare.
Grade: C-
Sony Pictures Classics will release “Daddio” in select theaters on Friday, June 28.
