Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Daddio’ on Netflix, a contrived but enjoyable actor's duel between Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn

Daddio (now on Netflix) is what you call a good ol’ two-hander, a single-setting drama consisting of one drawn-out conversation between two people. Some consider My Dinner with Andre to be the benchmark for this storytelling method, which ends up being a test for all parties involved: Can the filmmakers put together a compelling narrative with just dialogue? Will the actors make the most of the intense focus on their performances? And will the audience hang with the minimalist structure and presentation without being tempted to go back to the streaming menu and find something with a little more physical movement? Writer/director Christy Hall and stars Sean Penn and Dakota Johnson are hopefully up for the task.

DADDIO: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We never learn her name, but the credits call her – I dunno, should we cringe at this? – Girlie (Johnson). She hops in a cab at the airport, destination Midtown New York City. It’s nighttime. The taxi is an old-school, battered yellow cab, not a Tesla or a Subaru driven by some Uber part-timer. No, behind the wheel is Clark (Penn), a weathered and lightly salty seen-it-all Noo Yawker type who heavily peppers his speech with profanity. He grumbles at another cabbie who honks at him, beefs about the Uber guys (“These f—in’ apps”), tells his passenger, “You f—in’ won, sweetheart, you did.” Ugh. Travel and the airport suck the life outta you and now you gotta listen to Mr. Chatty Cabbie here, going on about how people always stare at their phones, so if you pick up your phone you’re all extra self-conscious about looking at it instead of engaging in conversation you might not want to have.

At least Clark isn’t boring, or too boorish. (OK, maybe he’s a little boorish. But it’s forgiveable.) He isn’t a talk-about-the-weather-or-that-new-Netflix-show kind of guy. No, he waxes about how an increasingly cashless society means he gets smaller tips these days, how salt and tea used to be currency – and how “Girlie” strikes him as someone who can “hold her own.” He’s right about that, because she doesn’t shrink away from his crass tone, and if she’s initially a little annoyed by his blahblahblah, she soon leans into it, realizing that this might not be the usual dull conversation between two people who only seem to have basic biology in common. 

Now, I’m not saying Clark could be the star interrogator for the homicide squad, but he notices the details (a variety of cues tell him that “Girlie” is coming home to New York rather than visiting) that allow him to ask relevant questions (“Where’d you go for a visit?”). She shares that she visited her half-sister in Oklahoma, where they grew up, which leads to the story about how she ended up in New York and who her parents are and to the “daddy issues” that Clark sniffs out like a drug dog that just found a brick of cocaine in a pile of luggage. Meanwhile, she texts with an unnamed lover who seems rather needy and desperate to see her – and then sends her a dick pic, because all he wants is sex, it seems. Clark sniffs that out too, including the little fact that her desperate lover is married. He knows these things, because he was the guy who’s been married and had things on the side. And now this conversation is interesting, not, as the lady once put it, the usual mindless getting-to-know you chitchat. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Locke was more of a one-and-a-half-hander, since Tom Hardy spends the entire movie in his car making phone calls (of increasing urgency, I might add).

Performance Worth Watching: In a movie that encourages a degree of performative acting, Johnson is a degree or two less performative than Penn. Johnson, winner of Saddest Eyes in Hollywood five years running, makes the most of a movie heavily stocked with studious closeups. 

Memorable Dialogue: “Girlie” puts an edge on her end of the convo after Clark makes a comment about her “lifting her leg” on things in order to claim her territory: “I don’t mind squatting.”

Sex and Skin: A few brief over-the-shoulder shots of “Girlie”’s sexting yields female toplessness and graphic male underwearlessness.

Our Take: How much one enjoys Daddio depends wholly upon one’s desire to spend 100 minutes in tight quarters with Penn and Johnson, to the point where you can almost smell their breath (and are thankful for the moment when Clark shares a stick of gum with his passenger). Save for a standout extended cameo in Licorice Pizza, Penn’s output has been marginal for a decade, and it’s good to see one of the most intense actors in the game sink his teeth into a meaty, character-driven role, even if he leans into some of the contrivances of the stagey setup. Quietly becoming one of the upper-tier actors of her generation, Johnson avoids such temptations, holding back a little more, playing her character coy without cliche, and maintaining a run of strong performances including Cha Cha Real Smooth and The Lost Daughter (not to mention the surely intentional comedy of the Madame Web press tour). 

You may need to forgive the film for its tendency to play out in a predictably quasi-literary fashion, where the dialogue is overly thick with metaphor and double-entendre, and the characters are heavily fortified with irony. Clark comes off like the overconfident older not-a-gentleman who likely masks some insecurities, “Girlie” is surely more worldly than she seems, and when they talk about the “ones and zeros” of her computer-programming career, they’re obviously talking about more than just computer programming. But Penn and Johnson make sure these prickly, but endearing characters aren’t privy to simple definitions, and while Hall’s script tends to feel more capital-W Written than natural, and not particularly profound in its observations of Men And Women And What Makes Them Tick, the two actors find enough pathos in their exchanges to make the film feel, if not cathartic, at least moderately satisfying. 

Our Call: Daddio is no game-changer, but a lot less has been done with a hell of a lot more than one setting, two talented actors and a rock-solid script. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.