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‘Gasoline Rainbow’ Review: Five Zoomers Hit the Road to Put Off Growing Up in an Endearing, Semi-Improvised Indie


Directed by brothers Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross, the road movie 'Gasoline Rainbow' offers a sunny portrait of teenagers putting off adulthood.

Introduced through glimpses of their student IDs and childhood bedrooms, Tony Abuerto, Micah Bunch, Nichole Dukes, Nathaly Garcia and Makai Garza (mostly just playing themselves) leave behind those adolescent identities, pile into a van and gun it west toward the Pacific Ocean. Here, the sibling directors fashion a new vehicle for their pseudo-documentary stylings, which last carried them to a Sundance breakout in 2020 with the poignant oddity “Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets,” about an eclectic guild of barflies facing down existential troubles during their regular dive’s final night of operations. That surrender to naivety is also the essential charm of “Gasoline Rainbow,” as well as its narrative spine, with the teens’ giddy pull toward the party at the End of the World, mythologized in passing by nearly everyone they encounter.

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