SLIFF 2009 Review: HOW I GOT LOST

How I Got Lost… Well, maybe you should start to answer that with the drunken cab ride out New York to Philadelphia. The film by Joe Leonard follows Andrew (Aaron Stanford) and Jake (Jacob Fishel) a year after the 9/11 attacks. They were two promising kids who grew up into mediocrity. Jake, an aspiring novelist who settles for sports writing, loved and lost a beautiful blond girl named Sarah (Nicole Vicius), a girl who tends to disappear a lot, and Andrew, in the midst of a drunken downward spiral, just lost his father. Andrew tricks Jake into attending the funeral, hence the “surprise” trip to Philadelphia, and then on to Ohio. On their journey, Jake meets a small town waitress, Leslie (Rosemarie Dewitt), and the flirtatious outcome that is more than predictable follows. Andrew, being the loud, obnoxious one of the duo, makes a rude, loud speech to all of the guests at the wake, and delves further into his alcoholism. The journey moves on to find Jake meeting several people to influence his life, while Andrew does not have the same positive outcome. Go figure, the one that drinks his life away doesn’t get the fairytale ending!

The film contains many flashbacks of Jake and Sarah, filled with horribly cheesy music and philosophical voice overs or lines that are way too over thought. Although the characters are all very likable, especially Jake, the film seems like it tries a bit too hard to be deep and meaningful. It almost seems like the kids from Dawson’s Creek grew up and made this film. The friendship between the two, although sweet and easy to relate to, is horribly cliche. Most of the film can be predicted before you get through the sequence of events leading up to each situation. I have a hard time believing that a small town gas attendant would give two strange men a ride back to their car, or a waitress would pick up a man, after just meeting him once or twice at her work, and take him with her to pick up her infant son. Not to mention she takes him home after that, and lets him “spend the night”.

I got bored with all of the cliches and the lack of believability pretty quickly with this one. I would have turned it off an hour into it if the character of Jake wasn’t so likable. The concept of finding true happiness when you think that nothing can possibly go right in your life is great, I just don’t know if it was executed to its full possibility in this one.

HOW I GOT LOST will screen at the Tivoli on Saturday, November 14th at 2:30pm and at Webster University on Sunday, November 15th at 6:00pm during the 18th Annual Whitaker Saint Louis International Film Festival.