As great an actor as Olivia Colman is, she's mostly powerless against the sentimentality of Irish dramedy Joyride, in which she plays a cranky middle-aged woman who bonds with an eager young boy. The road-trip movie takes a predictable journey toward a destination that rings false, no matter how hard Colman and newcomer Charlie Reid try to create a convincing connection between their characters. Whatever quaint small-town Irish charm that Joyride has, it runs out fairly quickly.

Joyride opens at the memorial for 13-year-old Mully's late mother. Onstage at a rowdy pub, Mully (Reid) sings Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher" and watches as his shifty father, James (Lochlann O'Mearáin), tries to sneak out of the pub without Mully noticing. James grabs the money being collected for the local cancer treatment center, and Mully follows him, grabbing the money back and running off. Without a plan, he jumps in the first open car he sees, a taxi, and drives off.

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Olivia Colman in Joyride

Mully doesn't have a destination in mind, and he definitely didn't expect to have company. It's only after he's driven a short distance that he notices Joy (Colman) passed out in the back, next to a car seat holding a newborn baby. When he finally rouses Joy and offers to drop her off, she insists that he has to drive her to her original destination, a town several hours away, or she'll press charges for kidnapping. Meanwhile, James is on their trail, determined to get the money back to pay his debts to some unspecified criminal organization.

Mully and Joy's relationship is initially antagonistic, but it's obvious that they'll soon become friends. With his deceased mother and deadbeat father, Mully needs a loving parental figure, and Joy needs to learn how to be a parent. She's on her way to give her baby over to a friend since she's never wanted to be a mother and doesn't even know who the child's father is. She didn't expect to get pregnant at her age, and she's certain that her friend will be a better mother. Unlike last year's complex The Lost Daughter, which landed Colman an Oscar nomination for playing a reluctant mother, Joyride isn't interested in nuanced views on motherhood. As soon as Joy reveals that she's planning to give up her baby, it's obvious that she'll end up embracing her new life as a parent.

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Olivia Colman and Charlie Reid in Joyride

Mully's character arc is just as obvious. He opens his heart to Joy as he processes his grief for his mother. Some of Joyride's moments that are meant to be sweet indications of the characters' growing closeness just come off as creepy, and there isn't anything particularly heartwarming about their eventual partnership. When Joy takes the lipstick that Mully has been carrying around as a keepsake of his late mother and applies it to her own lips so she can give him a kiss on the cheek while he's sleeping, just like his mother did, it comes off as more of a violation than a kind gesture.

Various contrivances keep Mully and Joy on the road for longer than expected, from running out of gas to narrowly missing a ferry to being stopped at a police checkpoint. About halfway through the movie, James catches up with them, and Joyride's dynamic changes as both Joy and Mully direct more of their antagonism toward James. He's a one-dimensional jerk who coaches his son to lie about the stolen money and tries to seduce Joy with Mully asleep in the same room.

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Director Emer Reynolds and writer Ailbhe Keogan offer more depth to Joy and Mully, with occasional flashbacks to Joy's childhood that attempt to explain her current aversion to parenting. Colman and Reid bring strong emotions to the heavier scenes, but there's only so much for them to work with, and Joy's anguish never feels genuine. Other characters judge her for not wanting to be a mother, and the movie does, too, giving her only thin resistance to overcome along the way to a predetermined outcome. It's condescending and phony.

That description applies to most of Joyride, which tugs hard on the audience's heartstrings but rarely gets the intended result. Stories like this are so familiar that in order to succeed, they need characters, settings, or circumstances far more original than anything Joyride has to offer. Joyride isn't quirky or funny enough to fit alongside feel-good British working-class comedies like Kinky Boots or The Full Monty or recent releases The Duke and The Phantom of the Open, and it's not affecting enough to work as straight drama. It's a forgettable entry in the filmography of a brilliant actor.

Joyride opens Friday, Dec. 23, in select theaters and on VOD.