‘Tow’ Review: Rose Has Plenty to Byrne But In Woefully Uninspired Vehicle [C+]
To the delight of many a gay, Rose Byrne recently received her first Oscar nomination for her shattering, darkly hilarious performance in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. In it, she portrays a woman on the edge of stability, with forces both external and internal battering her at every turn. Tow finds the esteemed actress working in a similar vein, playing a character who also finds herself in unfortunate circumstances both due to choices she’s made and the decisions of others. Unfortunately, Stephanie Laing’s monosyllabically titled film (the one plus that this movie has in comparison to If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is that fans of Byrne will use far fewer characters when posting about it) is a thin examination of the struggles that our modern world forces upon individuals.
Byrne plays Amanda, a woman who, as the opening title card states, is one of the country’s “1-3 million vehicular residents.” Due to a series of hastily-explained circumstances, she’s found herself living out of her car and desperately looking for a job, all while trying to remain close to her estranged daughter Avery (Elsie Fisher). The mother-daughter pair are separated by several state lines – Avery lives in Utah with her father, while Amanda is in Seattle – and keep in communication exclusively via calls and texts. Amanda experiences a combination of embarrassment and denial about her present state, not letting Avery on to the truth of her living situation.
After experiencing the high of finally getting a job offer at a dog salon, Amanda is immediately brought back down to Earth upon discovering that her car has been stolen. And although it’s quickly recovered, that doesn’t mean that her troubles are over. The towing company that’s holding onto her car refuses to release the vehicle to its owner until she pays the not-insubstantial bill. Unable to afford this sudden expense, Amanda is forced to stay at a church shelter run by a tough but fair woman named Barb (Octavia Spencer). With truly nothing left to lose, Amanda sets out to fight the towing company in court, with the help of her very young lawyer Kevin (Dominic Sessa).
Rose Byrne is the singular reason to seek out this film. From the beginning, it’s clear that she’s fully invested in the difficult creation of her character, emphasizing her idiosyncrasies and contradictions, which less bold actors might underplay or avoid entirely. Amanda is lovable but frustrating, and Byrne’s charisma helps audiences understand why the people in Amanda’s life keep giving her chances. Most impressively, Byrne doesn’t shy away from emphasizing Amanda’s pricklier elements, like her brash sarcasm and sudden outbursts of temper. She spits out dialogue with a slightly slurred voice that casts doubt as to her state of sobriety in every moment. But because Byrne is able to give a strangely endearing quality even to these aggressive moments, she comes across as charming, drawing people into her orbit with actions that should naturally repel them. Her big showcase scene comes at the film’s emotional climax, when Amanda makes the choice to share her story with her addiction recovery group for the first time. She approaches the scene with an off-the-cuff, underplayed energy, as if she’s trying to hurry past her own emotions but, of course, they catch up with her, and Byrne gives into them in a truly heartbreaking display. But with a screenplay this pat, even Byrne has trouble fully selling some moments of intensity that aren’t fully supported by the filmmaking. In one later scene where Amanda learns some shattering news about her car, Byrne struggles to deliver a truly committed reaction.
But still, Byrne is able to find variations in her character in a way that the actors around her aren’t. This isn’t entirely the fault of the ensemble, as this is the type of overwrought film that sees characters walk into a scene and immediately declare their most vulnerable thoughts and feelings in a way that borders on parody. Ariana DeBose does her very best as a fellow resident of the shelter to create a captivating character, but her big confrontational scene with Amanda comes across as simplistic and melodramatic. Demi Lovato’s brief performance as another shelter occupant is borderline disastrous; she completely misses the mark in what should be a moving scene where she expresses doubt to Amanda about being able to successfully raise her unborn child. But again, the boilerplate dialogue she’s given would be tough for most actors to salvage (one scene that lets her show off her vocals has big “don’t make me sing” energy, but again, that’s probably not her fault).
Octavia Spencer plays a role we’ve seen her do many times: a no-nonsense but ultimately caring figure of authority. She could do this part in her sleep, and she brings a much-needed authoritative energy to the story. Dominic Sessa, who was the talk of the town for his breakout performance in The Holdovers, shows valiant effort in his depiction of a selfless lawyer, but who could possibly deliver lines like “Have you ever heard of kindness?” with full sincerity and not have it feel profoundly corny?
Laing’s filmmaking is regrettably unpolished. The film takes place across the course of about a year, and a good amount of plot developments and characters’ emotional states are conveyed through texts between Avery and her mom, and diary entries written by Amanda. These are displayed on-screen and, occasionally, narrated by their authors via voiceover. However, this choice isn’t deployed every time the written word is shown, making it feel as if the brief bits of narration were added in post-production only when too much text is on-screen for the audience to read. It may seem minor, but filmmaking choices like this give Tow a slapdash quality. Similarly, the musical score by Nathan Barr and Este Haim (she of the famed sisterly musical trio Haim) is annoyingly quirky, further making the film feel unfortunately disposable.
Like its central character, Tow has moments that manage to charm despite its more off-putting elements. Rose Byrne, unsurprisingly, conjures a good–at times, bordering on terrific–performance that stands as the most convincing reason for the film’s existence. She mostly rises above an unforgivably trite screenplay, but the esteemed members of the ensemble around her aren’t able to create compelling on-screen personas out of their characters. Despite being a shallow film, the cast is drowning in a sea of simplistic writing. Paying for a ticket to this unfulfilling film just might feel like having to shell out cash for an unexpected vehicular expense.
Grade: C+
Tow will be released in theaters from Roadside Attractions and Vertical Entertainment on March 20.
He currently resides in Chicago and is a proud member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics. He also writes and podcasts for Next Best Picture and co-hosts his own podcast “Halloweeners: A Horror Movie Podcast.” You can follow him on Twitter, Letterboxd, and Bluesky @codymonster91
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