Premise: On his way to a first date with the girl he likes, a teenage boy finds his new car is being sought after by criminals.
There are a lot of movies I can compare First Date to, and none of them are bad movies. First Date is a more extreme Dope, for example. My notes say it's Superbad meets Free Fire. There is a winning formula for me that this movie taps directly into even if it's not perfectly successful at it.
Mike (Tyson Brown) is a high school student who sets up a date with the girl he likes, Kelsey (Shelby Duclos). In preparation for the date, he decides to spend all his money on a car to impress her. All he can find is a rundown old car from a suspect guy on Craigslist. He buys the car anyway. It turns out that the car was being used by a group of criminals as a cocaine stash. So, before and after Mike finally meets up with Kelsey, he goes on a journey all night with criminals in a book club, crooked cops, and even a randy old couple. Odyssey movies like this are one of my favorite movie types. It's hard to write one sustained plot. It's much easier to write a bunch of chapters then find a way to connect them. And it's one of the only subgenres where the "small world problem"* doesn't bother me as much.
*This refers to writing a screenplay with the same recurring characters despite being set in a large area. It makes the scope of the world feel very small, because what are the odds that you run into the same people in multiple locations on the same night.
What's really shocking is how new or lower profile everyone in this movie is. At the time of me writing this, no one in the main credits even has their own page on Wikipedia. There are no former SNL repertory players or recurring sitcom guest stars in this. No one was familiar to me, and they were pretty good anyway. Tyson Brown keeps in the tradition of slightly nerdy and timid protagonists who find their assertiveness by the end the movie. Shelby Duclos is a less common type. She's the hot girl, but she's actually tough. Not, like, she acts tough or is confident. She's literally introduced working out at a punching bag and looks like she could do some damage to someone. She and Brown have some nice RomCom banter. The movie leans a bit much into some quirkiness. An 8-track player and a VHS of Titanic are fairly prominent in the movie (and no, it's not any kind of period piece from what I could tell). The group of criminals hunting them spend most of their time talking about Of Mice and Men for their book club. But, I'm one of those people who loved how much Me & Earl & the Dying Girl highlighted its oddities, so I enjoyed it here as well.
There are plenty of flaws in the movie for anyone looking for them. The pacing is a little erratic. It all feels pretty derivative in the broad strokes. At a certain point, the movie becomes disinterested in the high school protagonists entirely. Some of the jokes feel like they were left over from an earlier draft where they made more sense. I don't really care though.
My last note when I first watched the movie was "I can see this moving growing on me a lot." It's been a few days (as the time of writing this), and that's already happening. I don't think this movie is for everyone. Certainly, if you aren't a fan of "guns can be funny" humor, then this won't appeal to you. I think the lack of any familiar names will prevent this from breaking out in any big way. And, while the cast is good, I wouldn't say anyone is destined for stardom from their work in it. Mostly, I think it's an announcement of writer/directors Manuel Crosby and Darren Knapp as filmmakers to watch out for. I can easily see a bigger studio grabbing them up to do the same basic thing with some bigger stars attached.
Verdict: Strongly Recommend
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