Ride the Eagle is an odd film. It’s maybe meant to be a life-affirming journey of self-discovery but holds that concept at a distance. Yet it also has some of the best romantic chemistry on screen in a while… between two people who are never in the same room. It’s some pretty impressive acting in a film that never quite gets to where it may – or may not – be going.
The film stars Jake Johnson is a somewhat shiftless man who learns his estranged mother (played by Susan Sarandon) who abandoned him as a child has died. She left him her cabin on a lake under the condition he complete a series of tasks she’s outlined for him. So he (and his good dog) go up to the cabin to learn something about life.
Aa a movie that suggests it’s going to be a transcendent study on what it means to be alive, it doesn’t seem to do that (or maybe even want to do that). It’s arch, distanced, and barely seems to care about mom’s life lessons… and those lessons are pretty weak anyway. So the film kept me at a distance… it was never the movie it might be trying to be… and I’m not actually sure it was trying to be that. It almost feels like a goof on the idea of self-discovery. Which, hey, would be cool too.
On the other hand, one of his tasks is to reconnect with “the one that got away”. And he does call an old girlfriend and they do reconnect and it’s one of the most charming and romantic things. His never-in-the-same-room chemistry with D’Arcy Carden (from The Good Place) is fantastic. I wanted more of it.
But the problem is, the romance plot and the self-discovery plot don’t really cohere and I was left a little removed from the plot. None of this is bad at all though… it just doesn’t rise to the level I was hoping for. The film only half takes off. Because maybe it had no interest in doing so.
And yet this is still a good flick though… I think it’s still worth a watch and can generate (a few) laughs and (a few) warm feelings. It’s actually hard to complain about since half of me thinks it did exactly what it set out to do.
Score: 79