Dakota Johnson stars in Daddio as an unnamed young woman who, after landing at JFK Airport, hails a taxi driven by Clark (Sean Penn).Supplied
- Daddio
- Written and directed by Christy Hall
- Starring Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn
- Classification 14A; 101 minutes
- Opens in select theatres June 28
After watching Daddio, the poorly titled and not-all-that-better-conceived drama about a cabbie and his passenger, you will encounter the smallest surprise of your life by discovering that the film was originally conceived as a stage play. A two-hander that is all talk, Daddio might have been a decent night out were it staged off-off-way-off-Broadway. But reworked for the big screen, the whole thing hits a succession of speed bumps, potholes and other obstacles that require a far more road-tested script than on offer.
Continuing to prove that she might have the very worst taste in projects, Madame Web’s very own Dakota Johnson stars as an unnamed young woman who, after landing at JFK Airport, hails a taxi driven by Clark (Sean Penn) – a crucial error that audiences end up paying for. As the pair encounter a series of grim traffic jams on their way into Manhattan, Johnson’s character encounters every commuter’s worst nightmare: small talk. This naturally being a play-cum-feature film, though, the conversation detours into all manner of ostensibly deep topics, including a swerve into sexual politics that forces audiences to listen to Johnson and Penn debate the proper use of the word “panties.”
Penn seems to believe that he’s conjured a charming rascal when in fact Clark is just an annoying dullard.Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
Perhaps a sharper, genuinely sexier screenplay could have enlivened such a cringe-inducing affair. But the worst side effect of Hall’s thin and sizzle-free script is that it encourages Johnson and Penn to go overboard in a bid to compensate.
Johnson barely survives the journey, making it hard to believe that such a young woman would give any time of day to a man like Clark, whose ideas about women and marriage seem imported from the era of Travis Bickle. But it is Penn who is ultimately responsible for steering the production into a ditch, with the actor seeming to believe that he’s conjured a charming rascal when in fact Clark is just an annoying dullard.
Taking place in real-time – all the better to simulate the million tiny frustrations of a slow commute upon moviegoers, I suppose – Hall’s film takes an already static situation and makes it dramatically immobile. Not even Uber could have produced such a brutal hit to the taxi industry.
Barry Hertz