'STOP AND GO'.....A COVID COMEDY? SURE, WHY NOT.

Stop And Go (2021)     It's entirely possible that other independent filmmakers attempted comedies about the Pandemic......but since this is the first one we've seen so far, we'll start with "Stop And Go".

                 This features all the pluses and minuses of poverty-budgeted indie films.......spontaneous improvisations by the actors that alternate between brilliantly funny and mind numbingly tedious......long, long stretches of dialogue that go nowhere fast.......and every so often,  a few moments of loony inspiration.

                   And we feel pretty safe in saying that with the exception of people who've been in a coma for the last 2 and a half years, everybody else who suffered through this endless plague can relate to what goes on here. 

                   It's 2020.....people are dropping like flies and there's no vaccine yet in sight. Sheltering at home, sisters Jamie and Blake (comic actors Whitney Call and Mallory Everton) receive a desperate call from their grandmother to extract her from her nursing home.....where COVID's wiped out almost everyone except a few residents and one harried male nurse.

                    The girls, armed with masks and a generous supply of hand sanitizers, daringly risk a cross country road trip to rescue grandma.........which involves such life-threatening activities as handling gas pumps no doubt covered with the virus. 

                     While Call and Everton are fast-on-their-feet improvisors, the film duplicates an actual road trip by trapping you in the car with them for very long stretches of time......

                      Sometimes they're funny in their non-stop riffing with each other.......but just as often, sometimes, we wanted out of that car real bad......(much in the same way all us really wanted out of our homes throughout the pre-vax misery of 2020....)

                     Interrupting the road monotony, the film does sprinkle in some inspired comedic bits. The girls' clueless older sister Erin (Julie Jolley) phones from a cruise ship, where she downplays the threat.....claiming the piles of dead passengers could've easily passed away from previous conditions. 

                     All in all a tough one to rate.....since it varies from laugh-out-loud moments to the all too prevalent sleep-inducing excesses that try our patience mightily.  We'll generously settle on 2 and a half stars (**1/2)......but anyone not used to indie film  freewheeling.....well, you read the review....proceed with caution.