When you’re hiking through nature, you miss a lot if you’re not paying attention. The same holds true when you’re viewing Good One, the story of a teenage girl’s hike through the Adirondacks with her dad and his best friend.
Seen mostly through the eyes of 17-year-old Sam (Lily Collias), the flick is full of telling moments, but few of them hit you over the head. Instead, writer/director India Donaldson expects you to watch and listen for clues about what Sam is going through.
Fortunately, Collias’s face registers the girl’s most fleeting thoughts, and cinematographer Wilson Cameron’s lens is right there to capture them.
Taking place over three days, the film follows along as Sam goes on what seems to be a family tradition: an extended hike with her dad, Chris (James Le Gros). They were supposed to be accompanied by both Chris’s friend Matt (Danny McCarthy) and his teenage son, but the son bails out following a last-minute family argument.
This leaves Sam alone with two divorced, middle-aged men whose egos and life experiences sometimes make them difficult traveling companions.
