It is a story we all know well. A young woman, desperate to leave her home, and an aimless lost man, promising the woman adventure in exchange for a life of crime. The latest retelling of this tale is Adam Carter Rehmeier’s Carolina Caroline, starring scream queen Samara Weaving and Kyle Gallner. Though stylistic and fun, the film seems to get lost in what it is trying to say about crime and wealth, becoming redundant by the time the credits roll.

Caroline (Weaving) lives with her father in their small town in Texas. When she witnesses Oliver (Gallner) scam a cashier to get an extra $10, she approaches him, appalled by what he has done, but secretly hungry for more. What begins in this drive-through town is a journey through the southeast of the United States, filled with crime and a growing love, as the two pack their bags in search of fortune, and Caroline’s exploration for who she is as she searches for her estranged mother.

The film can be described as some kind of Bonnie and Clyde (1967) meets Paper Moon (1973), if the former classic biographical drama was a bit more bland and the latter road drama was a lot less touching. The film hits all the beats of what a crime road-trip drama should be, but it seems to be missing having anything to say.

It feels kind of like the template was followed without an understanding of what worked so well in the previously mentioned films. A great love story between Bonnie and Clyde that guides their crimes in a heat of passion. A balanced tone between comedy and drama and cunning protagonists like Addie and Moses. Instead, we are left with action and heist scenes that we feel copied, and a relationship between the two central characters that feels as unbelievable as the heists Caroline is somehow able to continually repeat (in that horrible wig).

There is a conversation between the two central characters at the beginning of the film which led me to believe this film would be different. Oliver tells Caroline that he only steals from those who won’t feel the after affects. It is the ultra wealthy who won’t feel the slightest change if he robs them of a few dollars. He says he does not steal from those around them who work hard for so little. But immediately, his speech is contradicted. The first time we saw Oliver conning someone, it was an older man at a small petrol station. He clearly has no morals while stealing, even though it seems like his character was built around this very idea. Maybe this was intentional, to create a character who thinks he has morals but in the end believes nothing. But in the moment, it seems like the film is trying to turn this in to some kind of Robin Hood good natured crime story, when in reality, it already contradicted itself within the first minutes of the film.

It is also a difficult film to watch when you really are not sure of when it takes place. There are some cool stylistic choices here, and the music really works well to set the scene in the south of the United States. But with costuming and hairstyling that places Weaving’s Caroline in the present day, while old technology and cars are being used and there is not a cell phone in sight, it is confusing when you can’t place the characters in time. An intentionally timeless film is cool, especially when it deals with themes that are universal. But in the case of a crime film, it is difficult to watch heists being carried out when you can’t anticipate where the story will lead. We are always unsure if there is a camera that will catch them, or if it is simply a task up to the bumbling cop travelling by vintage car and communicating through pay phone only.

To further this, it is unfortunate that Samara Weaving’s performance did not work at all. While brilliant as the scream queen in Ready or Not, her shift into a more serious dramatic role comes off quite forced and inauthentic. There is also strange chemistry between her and Kyle Gallner, as I never truly believed in their love or commitment to each other, and always sensed something artificial sitting just below the surface.

Overall, Carolina Caroline is a fun movie with some great music to back it. But when you sit with it for a bit, you realize that there are much better American crime road-trip movies that you could be watching, that have a lot more to say and are simply a lot more entertaining to watch.

Carolina Caroline will be released in theatres in Canada on June 5. Image courtesy of Route 504 PR.