Our First Rotten Tomatoes Review!

ROAD TO EVERYWHERE opened on June 17 at the Monica Film Center in Santa Monica and on June 19 at the Angelika Village East Cinema in NYC with an incredible response from both audiences. We are thrilled to receive our first review from Avi Offer, a certified Rotten Tomatoes critic writing for The NYC Movie Guru.  Check it out!

 "In Road to Everywhere, Jason (Whip Hubley), a cab driver, drives Jake (Robert Mirabal), a Navajo casino dealer, from Los Angeles to the Navajo Nation reservation in Arizona where his grandson, whom he hasn't seen in three decades, is competing in a Native American rodeo. Writer/director Michael Paradies Shoob has made a profound, honest, engrossing and beautifully shot emotional journey well worth taking. Kudos to Shoob for designing a window into the heart, mind and soul of Jason and Jake and for the actors, Whip Hubley and Robert Mirabal, for opening that window completely while finding the emotional truths of their roles. The dialogue feels natural as do the performances. The audience can be seen as like another character who's eavesdropping on Jason and Jake's conversations and perhaps even relating to them.  Shoob incorporates exposition gradually through flashbacks, but they're neither clunky nor distracting.

       Fortunately, Road to Everywhere also never becomes schmaltzy or melodramatic, preachy or unfocused. It's fundamentally about friendship, compassion, empathy and human connection, something that's becoming increasingly rare these days yet universal and vital. It's fascinating and enlightening to watch two strangers with different backgrounds find common ground as they share their thoughts and feelings with each other through introspection, a very important tool to use in the garden of one's soul, so-to-speak, and experience epiphanies. Both Jason and Jack are emotionally wounded souls with cut flowers in the garden of their soul who hope and deserve to become better gardeners with a garden that's fully blooming. As the wise poet Pablo Neruda once wisely observed, "They can cut all of the flowers, but they can't stop the spring from coming." At a running time of 1 hour and 37 minutes, Road to Everywhere opens at Village East by Angelika via Driven Two Films. It would be a great double feature with Five Easy Pieces."