Passenger Side (2009)

And now for something completely different. Matt Bissonnette is a filmmaker from Canada who moved to Los Angeles and made a movie that has a little bit of each in it, It's the story of two brothers (one of them played by Bissonnette's brother, Joel) from Canada, who have moved to Los Angeles and who are spending a day driving around in a car looking for something. It starts as a caustic kind of comedy (this is the Los Angeles part) and it ends up being a rather tender and emotional drama (the Canadian It is essentially a movie with two guys in a car on a road trip that never strays too far from L.A. county. It starts with Michael (Adam Scott) answering a ringing phone with the greeting, "F--- off." His next words are, "No, I'm not afraid it could have been mom."
It's a call is from his younger brother Tobey (Jeff Bissonnette) Tobey's car is broken, and he needs Michael to drive him around for the day on a mysterious errand. "A couple of job interviews," he says at first. They drive from place to place through a Los Angeles that's remarkably devoid of palm trees or movie studios: Michael is sure that Tobey, a former drug addict, is looking to re-activate his habit. Tobey insists he's looking for Theresa, the love of his life, with whom he wants to reunite. As the day progresses, and the unusual encounters they have continue, Michael and Tobey gradually lose their appetite for baiting one another — there's only so much aggressive sarcasm a young man can carry in a mid-sized car before something real begins to seep in — and we learn, in oblique references, about the foundation of their grievance. Michael is a half-failed novelist. Tobey is a half-failed drug addict.
It is a day of oddity and healing, oddly juxtaposed. At times you forget why they are even doing this--but at the end, when the search for Theresa seems hopeless, the movie has slyly turned a corner and we learn that this foul-mouthed and raggedy road trip was actually a drama that was meandering its way to a clever romantic mystery. Passenger Side is a lot smarter than it first appears, and a lot more moving.