Baja Come Down

My method of publishing reviews for this site is as follows: first, I watch a movie and take some crappy notes while watching it. I write a draft of my review a day or two later, so I have time to gather my thoughts and limit my tendency to get fixated on small details. At a non-specific future date, I will clean up my review draft and schedule it for publishing. These are the steps I took with Baja Come Down. The last note I wrote about the film was that I won’t remember much of this film in 3 months. And I was both right and wrong. It’s less than 48 hours later, and I’ve already forgotten the majority of Baja Come Down. By the time I’m actually getting around to publishing this draft, I can only assume I’ve forgotten nearly the whole movie.

Baja Come Down is a breakup film. It’s about lesbian couple, Charlie and Hannah. In the very first scene, Hannah expresses in voiceover that she doesn’t think this relationship is going to last. And it doesn’t. But first, Charlie and Hannah decide to take a road trip from California to Mexico. While the trip initially goes well, eventually the flaws in their relationship sour the experience.

What I can say that is good about Baja Come Down is that the characters feel realistic and balanced. Charlie and Hannah very much feel like real people with real relationship struggles. I also admire that the film provides both of them with both positive traits and flaws. This isn’t a story where one party is a saint and the other is just the worst. We get perspective from both Charlie and Hannah and neither of them come off looking like an overt villain. So that’s nice. Still, I think to make a movie about ordinary people, some element of the film has to be extraordinary. And that’s not the case here.

Baja Come Down just doesn’t give you enough reason to care about any of this. It fails to elevate this realistic story into something that feels like art that would move its audience. There’s little of note in any element of the script. And the realization of said script also brings almost nothing. There’s an over-reliance on voiceover which I guess is a creative choice, but I consider a lazy one. And there’s some moments where poetry is either spoken or written on the screen. Also, the whole film has a sort of hazy, Instagram quality to the images. This is where I’m at with this movie. I’m just listing things about it that seemed like a notable creative choice. Please note, I didn’t actually like any of these choices.

Nothing about Baja Come Down is notably bad. By contrast, I had almost no emotional reaction to the movie at all. Admittedly, I watched Baja Come Down because I wanted something that was an easy watch and a lazy review. And the film did serve that purpose. But is that a good thing? That it met my criteria for a film that’s basically meant to be filler? I don’t think so. I’m glad the film isn’t bad in a way that will stay with me and affect my mood. However, I wish the film had something, anything going for it that I could cling on to and transfer into the long-term memory section of my brain. Instead, it’s a film that’s already perishing in my short term memory.

Overall rating: 2.8/10

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