Some movies I watched in 2024: Izzy Gets The Fuck Across Town
I am a dope who’s managed to ignore multiple cinematic classics for decades, but I’ll pick up a random film on a whim on the most idle of notions. I asked myself, “have I seen anything Haley Joel Osment has been in?”, saw this striking title on IMDb and figured, I might as well make this my first…!
Izzy has a mission: to crash a wedding. Only she’s on the wrong side of town and her car is on the fritz, so she winds up pulling every favour she can to get where she wants to go. We don’t know quite why Izzy’s looking to crash this wedding, or whose wedding it even is, but we pick it up as we go.
Izzy is quirky at best — she’s a dreamer, young and wild and full of big ambitions, a stronger believer in love and fate, with a knack for getting people to see things on her wavelength. At worst, she’s a self-absorbed wreck of a human being, mooching and coasting on other people’s couches waiting for the stars to align before she dares to make something of herself.
The theme throughout is each person’s unique perception of love and faith, and trying to see the good in what might or might not be there. She has a conversation with her mechanic, who points out a woman he sees every day: she smokes on the street corner at the same time no matter the weather, and watching from afar, he concocts a whimsical image in his head of what she must be like. He doesn’t want to spoil the magic by actually approaching her… and Izzy introducing herself just reveals she’s a crazy lady. It doesn’t stop the mechanic from hooking up with her later on, so clearly there’s a spark we’re not privy to.
Izzy is the queen of the side hustle, doing any dirty job if it earns her some cash or a favour in future, and every odd job reflects on the aforementioned themes somehow. Haley Joel Osmont’s character had called upon her to help write a break-up letter to his girlfriend, and now enlists Izzy to find the words to express his love to the woman passed out on his couch.
While bumming a lift and helping a woman rob a house, the two discuss their perceptions of faith. The stranger believes in fate, in that it doesn’t matter what you do, everything that happens will happen because it’s fated to. Izzy argues you can’t just sit idly by and let things happen because of belief in grand opportunities, possibly a rare moment of self-awareness, albeit one she might not have noticed.
The film starts with a dream of Izzy reminding herself of all the little quirks and foibles her boyfriend had — arguing with herself over how they annoyed her to no end, but also how much she loved them.
Again, not seeing the whole picture in a relationship is a running theme, even with the aforementioned stranger: Izzy has a run-in with the woman’s boyfriend, a syringe-wielding junkie who is clearly not in a stable state of mind or capable of looking after himself… but if this woman is so protective of him, then either there’s a love we’re just not seeing, or there’s a similar blindness to the others’ faults.
Izzy gets patched up by an older woman she found chucking out a box of old photos and video tapes — memories of her dead husband. She thought she was doing herself a favour by disposing of them, but in reminiscing over them with Izzy, she sees just how much the memories still mean to her. She paints scenery as a hobby, idyllic locations she’s never been to… and holds the belief that if she looks at them long enough, it’ll will her to where she wants to be.
Everyone’s lost in their own little fantasy to some extent, but this woman is the one who seemingly enables Izzy in building a stronger sense of self. Where everyone else is offering rides to her destination, this woman writes her direction and lends her a children’s scooter — it’s baby wheels, but it’s a means of self-propulsion, showing she needs to be in charge of her destiny instead of hitching it to other people’s wagons.
Not that her destiny is any less self-serving or anything — she crashes her ex-boyfriend’s wedding, chews into his mother and bride-to-be, and then begs and argues for him to come back, reminding him of all the good times they had together, and refusing all attempts to let her down gently. She leaves destruction in her wake… and ultimately gets what she wants. They get back together, and spend many seemingly happy evenings together.
… until the points she argued with herself in her dreams come to light again. All the little mannerisms she thought she loved now seem predictable, or the way he’d increasingly embellish stories from his childhood, as if trying to will that idyllic version into reality. It’s clear she was remembering what she wanted from their relationship, and now that they’re reconnected, the reality isn’t as sweet as the dream. The initial moments of euphoria, passion, excitement, it very quickly burns out for her.
That just seems to be her nature, driven by an aimless sense of mania and passion, probably in all the wrong directions. Throughout the film she’s constantly offered beers and goes the whole day having slept in her catering uniform, covered in blood, dirt, vomit, and god knows what else. She looks a mess and only digs herself into deeper and deeper holes…
… that by the end, one hopes to think this is all a detox. After all the running and excitement, the last 15 minutes are a slow burn on the couple’s new romance, one that she seems to grow slowly weary of. She’s gotten what she wanted, only it’s not what she wants.
The final shot is of Izzy leaving the apartment on her own, and a freeing smile washing over her. Before you can build yourself up, you have to go as low as you possibly can, and perhaps this is the start of a new, more mindful Izzy. It’s more likely she’ll continue to be a selfish disaster who doesn’t know what she wants, move heaven and earth to get it, then throw it away like an unwanted toy when it’s not all she’d hyped it up to be. But one can dream!
I don’t like to pick up films at random without knowing something about it, but this was an entertaining watch! I can sympathise with the unhappy reviews calling the ending a bit of a wet fart; the third act’s a splash of cold water on what’s otherwise been so lively, and watching a one-sided relationship fizzle out is rarely a fun thing to watch.
I do think a deflated ending effects our perception of the rest of a work, but the road towards it is still a blast. I perhaps viewed it as more of a character study than a story, per se, an essay on romance and perception (self or otherwise) sprinkled into a string of fun encounters with great actors and setpieces. It’s fun seeing a film ostensibly about love, but specifically all the ways it can be stupid and blinding, save for one couple who make a decent partnership. It’s, uh, perhaps not everyone’s idea of a good time, but this is why I don’t do film reviews often.
