Don't Make Me Go
Don't Make Me Go
When a single father to a teenage daughter learns that he has a fatal brain tumor, he takes her on a road trip to find the mother who abandoned her years before and to try to teach her everything she might need over the rest of her life.
Kevin Ward reviewedJuly 7, 2025
Max (John Cho) learns he has a fatal bone tumor and decides to take his daughter Wally (Mia Isaac) on a cross country road trip. Unbeknownst to Wally, Max wants to take the opportunity to try and teach her the lessons she may need for the rest if her life and also to introduce her to her mother who abandoned her years before since she has no other family to speak of. Cho and Isaac have great chemistry together which is key because the entire film wouldn’t work without it. It’s a sentimental father-daughter road trip film filled with perspectives on chasing your dreams vs settling on the “safe” or “responsible” choices. It honestly reminded me a lot of the Jim Carrey commencement speech where he recounts his father giving up on comedy to be an accountant. As an accountant it hits really close to home 😂. Whether this film lands for you will largely depend on how you feel about the end. This journey reaches a definitive fork in the road in the last act where, as a viewer, you know that only one of a few things IS going to happen. I’d bet that most people actually won’t like the road this goes down. (The film even supposes that very notion with the opening line “You're not gonna like how this story ends but I think you're gonna like this story”) But I actually really did like the ending and not just because I’m a road less travelled kinda guy. I found that it was a really interesting decision that reframes so many of the choices Max made for his life. What were the consequences of living his life completely for others and where did that leave him?