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Carried Away, written and directed by Tom Huckabee, is a wonderful indie comedy drama that’s essentially about a family seemingly breaking apart around the holidays. Sweet but never saccharine and, at times, goddamn hilarious, it’s the kind of movie that makes a bad day seem not that bad at all. You may go into it not expecting much (if you’ve seen one indie comedy drama you’ve seen them all), but
Carried Away will, I think, exceed your expectations by a mile and more.
Carried Away stars Gabriel Horn as Ed Franklin, a young actor who flies from Los Angeles to his family home in Texas for the holidays. Ed doesn’t seem to fit in with his family, especially his sternish father Rex (Mark Walters) and his brothers Steve (Bryan Massey) and, to a lesser extent, Davy (Tyler Corie). Steve is sick with cancer but is also bit of a belligerent jerk, and Davy has serious legal issues (he got caught with weed and might go to jail). The only person Ed feels close to is his grandmother (Granny, as played by Juli Erickson), but she was sent to live in a nursing home as she is experiencing the onset of dementia after she had a stroke. Ed doesn’t like this situation, and while home decides to take Granny out of the nursing home and back with him to Los Angeles. Granny agrees to the scheme, as she hates being in the home. But can Ed really get Granny to Los Angeles in one piece?