I can't say that watching this film was an altogether disagreeable experience. However, the plot (to the extent that it has one at least) doesn't hold up very well under critical scrutiny. On the one hand, the outlandishness, implausibility and excess of Conner's particular adventures remind me of a script I would have concocted at age 17. On the other hand, the adventure is lived with a consciousness of setting that I don't remember having until I was about 20, at which point I had almost or entirely outgrown my old naivety about how sequential events actually unfold.
Let's start with the suspension of disbelief. In the 2000s, it is exceedingly rare to marry immediately out of high school, and even rarer to be so affluent that one can simply depart on an extended gap year with no strings attached. No explanation is offered or even hinted at. Conner's family is certainly "cool," but so "cool" and "prog" that they'll open the purse strings at his beck and call, with no quid pro quo? I don't think a guy raised by parents like that would be so cool, calm and self-confident at 18. In fact, I am sure he would NOT be, and would have a difficult time being anything but a spoiled rotten brat for the rest of his life. Yet the film offers no hint of irony or self-awareness regarding this improbable setup: the authors seem to have been determined to tell a story THIS WAY and either not thought or not cared about whether the elements fit together. It's frankly just a sloppy approach to narration.
But if you can get past that initial roadblock, you'll find yourself reliving your wildest adventures and fantasies along with Conner, skipping (and sleeping) his way barefoot and fancy-free through Central America until he accepts, on a whim, a proposition to cross the Darién Gap into South America. If you know anything about this and have ever contemplated the full length of the Pan-American Highway you'll be eager for a glimpse into what such a crossing must be like. The film does not disappoint...
... until it starts to turn to philosophizing. Depending on how you read it, 18-year-old Conner's thoughts on and co-opting of selective FARC (the narco-terrorist left-wing paramilitary that's been wrecking havoc through Colombia for decades) ideas are either every bit as eye-rolling and ridiculous as the commercialized "Che" t-shirts that litter Marxist-nostalgic hipster neighborhoods such as the East End in London and Bataclan in Paris, or a clever but improbable cynical subversion: improbable both that it would occur to a newly-minted suburbanite American man just now discovering international travel do to so, and that he would actually accomplish his ulterior ends in so doing. (Guerrilla fighters are not exactly known for reasonable negotiation, and it's more than a little aggravating to see yet another attempt to inject them nonchalantly as "moral romantics" into "mainstream" popular culture.)
The ending, with the incoherent and melodramatic decision to make a sacrifice in order to pursue a dream, wasn't exactly improbable: 18-year-olds certainly can be melodramatic, but it wasn't consistent with what was suggested about the character's maturity earlier on. There was no hint anywhere in the film that the art of travel had to be read out in the way he decided to pursue it and not in the other way that was being offered as the "catch." So there we leave him to the rest of his adventure, ever so slightly annoyed at his self-imposed martyrdom and with the vague sense that, as far as he's come geographically, the film hasn't really taken us anywhere in particular. It's rather unsatisfying.
On the other hand, perhaps that's a kind of statement about this sort of libertine carefree bonanza: as "fun" as it might be it really doesn't move one or one's life forward.
Meh... nah, I think it's just sloppy writing. Although I will admit, you could do a lot worse. You could do a lot BETTER, too. But worse is more likely.
