[Contains minor spoilers - for full review see link below]

…Half road trip and half learning how to make a home, “Trucker” gives Michelle Monaghan a chance to show what she can do and the result is encouraging, although twelve year old Jimmy Bennett nearly steals the show

… If Monaghan’s acting is sufficient, young Bennett’s is excellent and helped considerably by his wiser-than-his-years lines penned by Mottern.

In many films the writer/director role is too much for one person to handle. In this film Mottern is able to use a simple story to give him the time and space to work on the presentation of the character’s lines. This is vitally important in keeping the film true-to-life and not becoming a moral lecture.

The setting is the sun baked hills of Southern California and points east, and the excellently matched country-western soundtrack produced by Mychael Danna deepens the aimlessness of the open road with a touch of a silver lining. The songs seem to float along with the trucks and cars as Diane and Peter encounter one challenge after another to their attempted bonding. The trucker urban myth is not exploited in this film, but explained with the utmost realism—Diane would rather be a trucker than a waitress or a nurse.

The storyline is formulaic: the young mother has learned to live without her son and the two are only reunited due to the serious illness of her ex-hubby. Both have serious misgivings. This would be a boring story if not for the seriously funny lines of son Peter who, being the parent for most of the film, shows mom Diane why she should stop living like a kid. The two are as much enemies as allies.

Broken family films usually become either maudlin or patronizing. Indeed, this film walks that line but somehow avoids falling into the dungeon of self-pity due to Mottern’s sharp and lean dialog. Great supporting work by Nathan Fillion as Runner, Diane’s married wanna-be boyfriend. The two appear in some pretty durn good drunken shenanigans that are actually funny. Drunk jokes rarely make a film, but these are added with such perfect realism that many will reflect on having been there, whether they like it or not. Also contributing to the overall success of the film are Joey Lauren Adams and Benjamin Bratt…

• Full Review: www.monstersandcritics.com

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