Daddio Parent Guide

A young woman (Dakota Johnson) has just landed at New York’s JFK International Airport, and then stepped into a yellow cab. Her driver is a lifelong New Yorker with a strong local accent and the unlikely name of Clark (Sean Penn). He strikes up a conversation with his last fare of the night, and over the course of the drive into Manhattan, the two candidly share their feelings about their lives, other people’s lives, and all the sex, loss, and stupidity between the two.

And they are not shy about the sex, either. You’d think that with the film’s only two characters sitting on opposite ends of a yellow cab for the entire film, it might be difficult to work in some graphic nudity. You would be absolutely wrong, as was I: the film spent a good ten seconds lingering on a “dick pic” on the protagonist’s phone. If that’s too much staring at genitalia for you, then you might as well quit now. The rest of the movie is milder, but that’s a big speed bump for your average audience.

For those of you who either don’t mind the nudity or are prepared to close your eyes for a few seconds, the rest of the movie is actually quite interesting. I’m not usually a fan of either Dakota Johnson or Sean Penn, but they scrape together some compelling chemistry that makes their unexpected conversation strangely watchable. That dialogue is the other content hurdle in the film: unsurprisingly there’s more sexual conversation (because of course there is, you’re not just going to drop a grainy cell phone picture of some dude’s unmentionables and leave it at that) and over 90 f-bombs to keep things spiced up.

With its limited set requirements and laser-focus on the performance of the actors, this movie has a strong stage vibe. This isn’t surprising because the production was originally planned for the theater, although it was then shifted to a feature film project. I don’t know if those theatrical roots will help Daddio find a broad audience, but I think it’s an engaging watch – if you can handle the torrent of profanity, amateur genital photography, and slower pace. I know that’s a big “if”.