Based on Sarah Dessen’s 2009 novel of the same name, “Along for the Ride” is a new young adult romance film. Directed by Sofía Alvarez, who directed the first two movies in the “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” franchise, “Along for the Ride” tells the story of Auden and Eli as they embark on numerous, carefree teenage adventures.
Auden West (Emma Pasarow) is an eighteen-year-old high school graduate who decides to spend the summer with her father Robert (Dermot Mulroney), step-mom Heidi (Kate Bosworth) and her half sister Thisbe at a beachside town called Colby. Feeling lonely, Auden decides to visit The Tip – a place Heidi says is where all the “cool” people hang out – and has an awkward makeout session with a guy named Jake. The next day, Heidi takes Auden to her boutique called Clementine’s, where Auden will spend the summer as an accountant. She soon finds out that one of the employees, Maggie (Laura Kariuki), is the ex-girlfriend of Jake. This makes Maggie and Auden get off to a rocky start.
Auden’s summer follows the same dull sequence; she wakes up, goes to the store and punches in numbers all day, buys a cup of coffee for $1.75 at the local gas station after work and drinks it while reading by the beachside. It is during this time, late at night, that Auden always spots a mysterious figure doing tricks on a bike. One day, the two finally meet and he takes her to a secret pie shop in town. It is there that Auden feels a tremendous amount of regret due to the way she’s been living her life — as a student who has always done well in school and followed the rules. The mysterious biker, who we learn is named Eli (Belmont Cameli), tells Auden that she should go on a quest of sorts where she breaks all the rules and does whatever she feels she has missed out on. The two then venture off on the quest as they break into a lighthouse after dark and race through the aisles of a store in a shopping cart. The pair slowly fall for each other as Auden learns about Eli’s past.
While the acting for both of the characters feels authentic, their individual personalities are not anything remarkable. Despite being advertised as a romance, the movie misses the mark at its attempt to capture the thrills of young love. Auden’s supposed aloofness — like her apparent lack of knowledge of the game Connect Four — is painfully forced. Auden never really fit in with her high school class; she’s accomplished in academics, she’s a big reader and a little awkward — sound familiar? That’s because it is. The movie tries too hard to make Auden fit into the not-your-typical-girl trope. There is nothing inherently wrong with possessing the same traits as Auden, but when the 1,000th movie comes out about a shy, smart and awkward girl falling in love while doing rebellious things, you start to wonder if films have lost their sense of creativity.
Additionally, the movie’s main premise of having Auden try all the things she never did as a kid seems exciting in retrospect, but it is quite redundant. For instance, breaking and entering a lighthouse seems like a strange childhood dream. The common trope of having the introverted main character unleash her “wilder” side has been overdone. It often perpetuates the narrative that you have to do rebellious things in order to say you had worthwhile teenage years, which isn’t true.
The most appealing part of the movie is not the romance, but the newfound friendship Auden forms with the local Colby girls. Even though she differs from them personality-wise — she would rather gleefully watch them break out into impromptu dance breaks instead of joining in — she still forms an unbreakable bond with them.
Although the movie preserves the same general chunks of the original story, it differs from the book in a few different ways. For starters, Jake and Eli are brothers. Auden’s personality as a whole seems to differ as well. Aside from the typical awkwardness she displays, the movie version of Auden seems ruder. In the book, when she finds out that Jake and Maggie used to date, Auden immediately clears up the matter with Maggie by explaining that she had no idea who Jake was. Yet in the movie, she chooses to ignore the whole thing, which complicates her relationship with Maggie and the rest of the girls. At the end of the film, it is revealed that Maggie and Auden eventually become roommates, which is a nice addition that differs from the book.
With so many romance films constantly being released, it is often hard to find a unique and thrilling one. That being said, “Along for the Ride” is one of those romance films that will get lost among the thousands. With a tomatometer score of 50%, “Along for the Ride” is mere background noise at best.
Kamilla Jafarova is an Entertainment Intern for the spring 2022 quarter. She can be reached at kjafarov@uci.edu.