What We Find on the Road review – American road trip in the low-key indie odyssey style

TJ (Finn Haney) has just turned 18 when a mysterious stranger turns up with a present from his absentee father. The gift turns out to be the keys to a 1968 convertible; a lovely surprise, but perhaps lovelier if it wasn’t falling apart and didn’t have a coffin-like box welded to the floor of the boot. He’s also given a time and an address hundreds of miles away, of when and where he will meet his father after many years. This is the setup for a sentimental and fairly low-key road trip following a fairly classic call-to-adventure odyssey structure, of the sort made in their dozens during the US indie film-making boom of the 1990s.

There’s something refreshing (or passe, depending on personal preference) about seeing a film made today starring a teenage lead character who is so unashamedly earnest. TJ, with his wide-eyed optimism tempered with the pain of parental rejection, recalls the likes of Dawson, he of the eponymous creek. Like Dawson, he’s an aspiring film-maker, and lines like, “Everyone has their own path to follow and mine is wherever PTA says it is,” are of course pretty cringe. But you know what? So are teenagers; not enough onscreen teens are authentically naff. It wouldn’t work however, if it wasn’t balanced with the emotional truth of TJ’s feelings about his dad, which aren’t embarrassing but raw and painful: “He didn’t even call me. He just didn’t want me.”

The wheels come off a little (not literally) in the concluding reel, where the mysterious box in the trunk is finally opened. It’s difficult for the answers contained within these kinds of narrative devices to be quite as satisfying as the questions, and so it proves. Here is a film where it’s better to travel hopefully than arrive, but the journey is pleasant enough.

• What We Find on the Road is on digital platforms from 18 November.