Oh to be young and carefree. Gasoline Rainbow romanticizes youth and camaraderie in a way that’s so pure and innocent, the film needs no overarching conflict to be highly engaging and vastly endearing. Gasoline Rainbow invites audiences to dismiss adulting and simply be another member of this young, aimless clan of friends for an hour and fifty minutes. And I have to say, those who embrace this invite are in for one of the most exceptional adventures we’ll see in film this year.

The premise is as straightforward as it gets. Five teens on the verge of adulthood embark on one last spontaneous adventure to escape from their small town of Wylie, OR and visit the Pacific Coast together for the first time. They have no plan and no money, but they are all in on winging every moment of this road trip, thus encountering new people, experiences, conversations, and periodic challenges that further strengthen the bond they have with each other.

It’s the kind of scenario every teen dreams of - a van-life road trip amongst friends with no adult oversight allowing this crew to whimsically wander through Oregon, pit stopping and problem solving along the way. Full of typical teen banter - jargon like “deadass” naturally embedded into conversations - Gasoline Rainbow can sound like a superficial excursion in the form of a teenage fantasy getaway, but writers and directors Bill Ross and Turner Ross imbue an unexpectedly satisfying sense of being at this impressionable age.

In most storytelling, this kind of road trip scenario is a recipe for disaster; many other storytellers likely would’ve utilized this premise as a perfect concoction for coming-of-age drama and naive calamity, stirring up in-group conflict, falling outs, reconciliation, and overarching themes about the value of maturity in the wake of adolescence. What we have with Gasoline Rainbow, instead, is a narrative that simply escorts these teens from one improvised situation to the next sans melodrama.

The few conflicts that do occur in the film serve less as sources of drama and more as opportunities for collective participation and cooperation. And the beauty of this story is even without the interpersonal conflicts, the themes of maturity that are present manage to manifest themself in empathetic and non-patronizing ways. With voiceover dialog from each of the characters assessing their thoughts and feelings to the introspective conversations they have with each other, we are given a front seat to teens trying to figure out life in their own way.

That is ultimately the real trick of this film: giving teens free reign to venture through an abnormally safe Oregon and still procuring an engaging and thought provoking journey. All of this to say that Gasoline Rainbow leverages a remarkable script to deliver an elevated cinematic experience through juvenile eyes, reminding us what it’s like to be young, curious, and free. 

Gasoline Rainbow is a blissfully endearing ode to youth, friendship, and purest notion of adventure. This is a film that fully grasps the spirit of exploration and discovery among those preparing to step up into adulthood and feels no need to be any less free-spirited than the subjects it follows. For its slice of life approach to this story and the experience of vicariously living through this friend group’s journey, Gasoline Rainbow is a gem of a film that will stick with me for a very long time. Deadass.