Is dont make me go a true story?

Amazon’s ‘Don’t Make Me Go’ is a drama that follows the story of a man and his daughter. When Max discovers that he has only a year left to live, he decides to use it to shape the future of his teen daughter. The time is limited and there is a ton of stuff that needs to be figured out. He has to teach her how to drive. He has to convince her to go to college and build a future for herself. But, most importantly, he has to reunite her with her mother, who is the only person Wally will have left after Max dies.

The film follows the duo as they embark on a road trip, while Max tries to check things off his list. Directed by Hannah Marks, it balances the seriousness of the situation with a few lighthearted moments thrown in the mix. The relationship between Max and Wally is a very real portrayal of the way fathers and daughters act around each other. If this makes you wonder whether the film is based on a true story, then here’s what you should know about it.

Is dont make me go a true story?

No, ‘Don’t Make Me Go’ is not based on a true story. It is based on an original script that Vera Herbert had written ten years before it was brought on the screen. While the events that take place in the film are fictional, Herbert, best known for her work in the emotional drama ‘This is Us’, drew from her own experiences to enrich the father-daughter relationship.

Herbert had been close with her father. They spent a lot of time together, especially going on road trips, which eventually gave her the idea to put Max and Wally in a similar situation. She also threw in a very real incident in the film where Max and Wally end up on a nude beach. When she was 16, Herbert’s father, unintentionally, took his children to a nude beach. However, their reaction was quite different from what Wally had in the film. They sat there for a couple of minutes before deciding it was best that they leave. Herbert also added a dance scene between Max and Wally as a reflection of the dance she’d had with her father when she was around sixteen.

Similarly, the actors and director of the film also added something from their personal experiences to the film. The part where Wally says that her father forced her into traditional African dance classes is taken from actress Mia Isaac’s life. Actor John Cho, who plays Max, also related to the role of being a parent to a daughter himself. Director Hannah Marks added the scene where Max playfully raps in front of his daughter. Cho and Isaac also connected with each other through their roles, especially with this film being Isaac’s first feature. Cho felt like he had to look out for her, teach her the ropes and make her first experience working in a film good. Isaac, being around sixteen at the time of the filming, didn’t find it too difficult to slip into Wally’s role and bring the combination of lovable and rebelliousness to it.

While the film is a fictional tale, it is undeniable that its emotions are rooted in reality, with everyone in the cast and crew contributing to it in their own way. Herbert’s intention in writing such a story was to give a sense of hope to the audience, showing them that even in the face of the worst tragedy, one can find the will to carry on. We see something similar happen with Max. So, even though the story is made up, there is something very real that the audience can take away from it.

Read More: Where Was Don’t Make Me Go Filmed?

At the beginning of Amazon’s cutesy father-daughter tale Don’t Make Me Go, a voiceover tell us: “You’re not gonna like the way this story ends, but I think you’re gonna like this story.” Almost two hours later and the prophecy was only half-correct. For the way that the film ends is a genuine text-your-friends-and-spoil-it-for-them-in-caps shocker, for all of the very worst reasons, a cheap, emotionally manipulative head-scratcher of a twist that leaves one with a sour taste in the mouth that lingers. But even before the dramatic left turn, all the way over the cliff and into flames, this ho-hum road trip comedy drama was already hard to like, an unspecific sitcom of eye-rolls and finger-wagging.

It’s unsurprisingly the work of an ex-This is Us writer, a network soap of shameless string and rug pulls, and perhaps ardent fans might find something here to mope over in that show’s recent absence. But for the rest of us, a film that should be radiating warmth and humanity is in fact surprisingly cold, almost factory-made, a drama about the messiness of family that feels far too tidy. The often under-utilised actor John Cho at least makes the most of a rare lead role, echoing similar single dad energy from 2018’s devilishly entertaining cyber-thriller Searching. In Don’t Make Me Go, there’s nothing as nefarious pulling him and his daughter apart but, ultimately, something equally life-threatening.

Cho’s Max finds out early on that those headaches he keeps experiencing are in fact the result of a terminal brain tumour, which gives him two unpleasant options. The first is surgery, but with only a 20% chance of survival, and the second is, well, nothing, and facing up to his final year of life. He opts for the latter in order to prepare his 15-year-old daughter Wally (newcomer Mia Isaac) for life without him. But he chooses not to tell her, and instead decides on a road trip both to attend a high school reunion and to track down the mother who abandoned them both years earlier.

Appearing on The Black List a decade ago, the annual list of the most-liked un-produced scripts in Hollywood and originally titled A Story About My Father, it’s baffling to see why something as generic and listless as this would have survived the long journey to the screen. It feels more like a sample script than a passion project, written to get staffed on something such as This is Us (timing-wise that may very well be what happened), and there is a clinical competency to writer Vera Herbert’s perfunctory dialogue. But it’s less a believable representation of how actual people talk and more of how characters in a show would, a slick but empty back-and-forth lacking in any detail or nuance, every expected beat from a father-daughter dynamic recycled without energy or thought.

It’s a shame, because Cho and Isaac, also impressive in this month’s social media satire Not Okay, try their very best, as does director Hannah Marks, all bringing their A game to a script that barely deserves their C (although Marks’ decision to use Iggy Pop’s overused The Passenger twice in a road movie deserves an enthused thumbs down). It’s their combined effort that crawls this out of one star territory, although I wavered in the heinous finale as the aforementioned reveal crash-lands into view. I’ll often forgive a deranged and poorly foreshadowed last-act twist in a horror or thriller, the heightened territory allowing for such silliness, but in a grounded film that takes itself as seriously as this, it’s much harder to stomach and impossible to forgive.

It’s a bizarre act of audience manipulation that only serves to highlight the overall incompetency of the script, relying on something this wild to distinguish itself from the great number of similar family dramas like it. The tears that the film so desperately wants us to find ourselves soaked in never come. Our eyes are far too busy rolling.

  • Don’t Make Me Go is now on Amazon Prime

Is based on a true story always true?

"Based on" a True Story There are creative liberties taken for sure, but most of the depictions within the script are based on what actually happened and how it happened.

Is Don't make me go based on a book?

The script for Don't Make Me Go was written by Vera Herbert (This Is Us) and originated as a spec script that landed on the 2012 Black List.

What disease did Wally have in Don't make me go?

She had been suffering from a heart disease called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which can be fatal if not diagnosed and treated. Wally did show symptoms for some time, as she had fainted earlier too, and used to have a racing heart and also sudden breaks of sweat, but never put much care or thought into it.

Does Don't make me go have a sad ending?

Therefore, the ending is quite optimistic, despite the sadness that came before. Max has the opportunity to live his life again, something that he may not have had the chance to do without Wally's encouragement.