Are we at the point when we can joke about the COVID-19 pandemic? If the jokes are told with this level of sincerity and skill, I’d say the answer is a definitive yes. Stop and Go perfectly juggles a complicated balancing act. The film is both a method of venting about the collective exhaustion society has felt over the pandemic and a hilariously awkward, singularly-told road trip film that clips along with jokes that will hit when (or if) the pandemic is gone and forgotten about.

Stop and Go, which premiered at Sundance as Recovery, tells a story set in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. It follows the lives of Albuquerque-based sisters Jamie and Blake. When they learn that their grandmother’s nursing home is undergoing a COVID-19 outbreak and their older sister Erin is on a cruise, the sisters decide to travel to Washington to bring their grandma to safety.

Stop and Go couldn’t work without the hilarious performances from Whitney Call and Mallory Everton. Call is the straight woman of the pair, undergoing the most visible dramatic arc while maintaining humor. She possesses an undercurrent of heightening stress, as the hijinks of the road trip and the pandemic slowly chip away at her sanity. It helps that she sells every single line of the script she co-wrote with Everton, keeping up beat-for-beat in the wacky dialogue.

Everton, who also co-directed, co-wrote, and edited Stop and Go, gets the more comedic display of work. She often maintains a constant high of emotions. Whether they are moments of glee, frustration, anger, or boredom, every moment with Everton on screen is a delight. She constantly operates at an energy level of an 11, but somehow she makes it work.

If the comedy wasn’t as hilarious as it is, Stop and Go could’ve easily been another film that is dated within the COVID-19 pandemic era. However, it’s more than that, possessing an idiosyncratic sense of humor that goes from traditional one-liner snark to incredibly zany and absurd moments of spontaneity. There’s plenty of COVID-19 humor that allows Stop and Go to mine the pandemic for good-hearted laughs. Yet for every joke about the health of Tom Hanks, there’s one for a road trip staple like an eccentric traveler the girls meet on the way.

Part of what makes Stop and Go such a successfully funny screenplay is that Everton and Call clearly had a great time writing it. The story is one filled with little flairs and touches, like dialogue that could only come from real-life conversations and jokes that are only effective because the actresses are laughing at them as much as the characters. It’s a goofy, awkward script in the best possible way.

While not necessarily a flaw, Stop and Go faces a limit that many independent comedies have. The filmmaking is relatively simple. It is a well-shot and edited movie, and there are moments where Everton’s directorial eye gets a chance to shine, but the limits of shooting in the pandemic with a small budget are evident in how little is shown beyond the necessities. It’s certainly not badly directed, but “functional” is the most accurate word to describe Stop and Go from a filmmaking standpoint.

Part of this is the nature of the road trip genre, which tends not to be a strong showcase for one’s directorial feats. Stop and Go deserves credit in that respect, as Everton has to wear multiple hats. That level of ambition and personal attention to detail is clear and even if Stop and Go doesn’t possess directorial flair, it possesses a signature and understated style.

Stop and Go is a riot of a film, despite its inherently tricky premise. It’s a film made in, about, and told for the COVID-19 pandemic generation. Yet it also manages to be so much more. Everton and Call bring their audience into their strange and wonderful world, with every joke hitting and dramatic beat matching. It’s a smaller film, but it deserves to provide the laughs it contains to the largest audience it can find.

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZV1bSAH_FY

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Stop and Go

8.5

Score

8.5/10

Pros

• Hilarious script
• Fantastic performances from lead actresses
• Ambitiously timely w/out being dated

Cons

• Functional filmmaking
• If one isn't ready to laugh at COVID-19, might be a tough watch