Like bartenders and baristas, cab drivers can hypothetically double as therapists — service workers who lend an ear for listening and a shoulder for crying. Keep the meter running long enough, and maybe you’ll unburden yourself straight into a breakthrough. At least, the movies’ romantic version of an old-fashioned taxi hack might be like that.
You may get an Uber and/or a Lyft driver who’s dying to hear all about your life, but they’re more likely to be just another gig-economy worker trying to get through the day. Assuming, of course, they’re not an actual licensed therapist behind the ride-app wheel, moonlighting to make ends meet. Daddio relies on that myth of the checkered-cab driver as outer-borough sage and surrogate analyst, however, in a way that feels both quaint and more than a little disquieting.
First, you have to believe that, given the perfect storm of circumstances — a ride from JFK airport into midtown Manhattan that’s suddenly, conveniently prolonged by traffic — would, in the year of our lord 2024, allow a young woman in her late twenties to engage in a spiky chat with a sixtysomething driver that turns into a battle of the sexes. Stranger things have happened, certainly. But the premise does require a leap of faith from the jump.
And even if you do buy into the conceit behind this feature-length bottle episode, writer-director Christy Hall has the uphill battle of convincing you that such creatures still roam the Earth, offering counsel i.
