By Sabrina Cognata

GO is the sort of holiday movie that makes complete sense to me.  Maybe it’s because any holiday that comes around my friends and I try to figure out creative ways to get totally messed up, which causes us to end up in all sorts of trouble that we eventually need to get out of.  Go is a multi-dimensional storyline being told from three separate vantage points concerning a drug deal that goes terribly wrong on Christmas Eve.  Now before you start thinking this is some sort of drug related drama—don’t this movie, my friends, is all comedy.

The story, told three-fold comes from the vantage point of four characters:  Ronna (Sarah Polley), Simon (Desmond Askew) and Adam and Zach (Scott Wolf and Jay Mohr).  Ronna is broke.  Let me rephrase that, Ronna’s broke and in debt.  She needs $380 so she won’t be evicted and is willing to do anything to get it.  Simon offers her his shift at Sons market so he can go to Las Vegas with his mates for Christmas and she snatches it up.  While working Simon’s shift, Ronna is approached by two guys, Adam and Zach, to buy twenty hits of ecstasy.  Usually they buy from Simon, but he’s out of town, so they press Ronna and she tells them she can hook them up. 

Ronna visits Simon’s dealer, Todd Gaines (Timothy Olyphant, and my favorite character in the entire movie).  Todd asks her if she’s stupid because 20 is the magic number that turns the intent to sell to drug trafficking.  Ronna assures Todd that she isn’t stupid or tying to screw him over and Todd gives her the drugs.  Ronna meets up with Adam, Zach and Burke (William Fitchner), the creepy undercover cop/sexual predator.  Ronna immediately gets an odd vibe and asks to go to the bathroom where she flushes the ecstasy and decides to leave. 

This leaves her in a mega pickle because she owes Todd money or his drugs back.  She uses children’s aspirin as a decoy and tells Todd she didn’t manage to sell picks up her friend and co-worker, Claire (Katie Holmes-Cruise) and takes off.  Ronna still needs money so she heads off to a local Christmas Eve rave (it’s 1999, common) and sells decongestant and allergy medicine to idiots there.  While she’s doing this, Todd catches on to the fact that she’s tried to screw him and he shows up to the rave with his gun and the intention of teaching Ronna a lesson.  Too bad he doesn’t get to shoot her because before he gets a chance Adam and Zach run her over with their Miata.  Does it seem technical, well it should.


Meanwhile, Simon is in Las Vegas with his guy friends and he’s busy pissing everyone in his vicinity off.  Firstly, he gets into a threesome with two mediocre looking jewess chicks he meets at a cheesy Vegas wedding.  In the middle of their tryst, the hotel room catches fire and Simon runs off, into the night, like a wimp.  He bumps into his friend Marcus (Taye Diggs) and the two end up in a stolen Ferrari, finding a 9mm in the glove compartment (FORESHADWING ANYONE?), and then decide to visit legendary Las Vegas strip club, Crazy Horse.  While they’re there, Simon uses Todd’s credit card, gets in a heap of trouble when he grabs at a stripper during a lap dance and ends up shooting the bouncer suppose to beat him up.  Simon and his friends race to leave Las Vegas and avoid the persecution of the muscle from Crazy Horse. 

Back in Los Angeles, Adam and Zach are having the worst Christmas ever.  The two are cooperating with Burke in order to get a drug charge expunged from their criminal record.  They’re suppose to set up Simon, their usual dealer, but when he’s not there they end up accidentally setting up Ronna who isn’t even a drug dealer.  In the middle of the drug bust, things become awkward and Zach looks at Ronna and secretly tells her to GO.  When the drug bust goes awry Burke says he can let them go, but first he invites Adam and Zach to his house for a pre Christmas, Christmas dinner where things are overly sexual and homoerotic for no actual reason.  Eventually, Adam and Zach realize they’re being pimped Amway and decide to leave.  While casually talking about their “girlfriend” they realize they’re dating the same person.  Actually, they’re dating the same guy, whom they decide to confront at the same rave Ronna’s selling drugs at. 

Once they get to the rave, confront and humiliate their boyfriend the two decide to leave all filled with Christmas joy or whatever you want to call it.  While celebrating and basking in the victory that is their broken homosexual relationship Adam accidentally misses seeing Ronna jump in front of the car and runs her over.  Vexed with what to do the first decide to leave her in a ditch, but then come back to help her.  In one of my favorite parts of the movie, Adam says they should put Ronna in the trunk and then proceeds to move things around.  Zach then looks at Adam and yells, “IT’S A MIATA!”  Eventually, the two take Ronna’s body and place it on a BMW where some random passersby see her and call and ambulance. 


Actually, no part of this movie is actually about Christmas or the Christmas spirit and that’s how it’s suppose to be when you’re busy trying to get high and laid while in your twenties.  I guess that’s why I think this is the perfect holiday spirit movie for anyone that’s going to enjoy their holiday season to the max.  Anyone wanna do a shot?