Her Name Was Jo

No special effect, simple and effective road trip of an 10 year old trying to find her real father. The discussions of the 2 friends are profound and bring some philosophy to this world.

Her Name Was Jo is a poignant, sometimes shocking, film that takes us through the journey of an impoverished, abused, neglected little girl who struggles to manage through a series of extraordinarily difficult situations. It's a film about pain and hope. Perhaps it's about the kind of people that are all but invisible in a society of fancy marketing and keeping up with the Jones'.

For those complaining about the soundtrack, I think they're missing an important point: This is the soundtrack of Jo's mind; the CD of her father's music and the only thing she has of him.

For many of us, this film is about every hope and sorrow that we crawled through on the way to somewhere... The human strength that propels us forward.

There was a definite church theme in the film, and it felt a bit like the 2 stark ends of faith and trust. One in which we see that faith seems to be fruitless and one in which we see that it embraces us nonetheless.

On a movie site that asks us whether our review contains spoilers, I AM DB manages to put a huge spoiler in their synopsis of this film, one which is intended as a surprise at the very end of the film or which, at the least, is something you slowly realize. Even the official Her Name Was Jo webpage doesn't indicate this surprise. So I won't either in the hope I AM DB will realize their error and fix their write-up.

Mary Cate Williams is Jo,a ten year-old girl whose mother has died and is living in Virginia with a drug addicted father. She leaves home with her best friend and they embark on a journey to find her biological father. They encounter a colorful cast of characters along the way. Williams is excellent and the supporting cast fine. The last parts of the film were a disappointment, especially a scene with Jo and a counterpart speaking to each other with only music playing without explanation. Subtitles are needed as the two girls are sometimes impossible to hear due to bad audio and too loud and annoying music in the background. The soundtrack is a major drawback; the singer ain't Bob Dylan. Overall, worth a watch for Williams performance.

I hadn't any idea what this was about and didn't read anything here first, so pardon my ignorance, but I did not realize that the friend was imaginary until very late in the game. I thought this character a puzzlement due to poor writing. The laughs on me, I guess. This is a curious little film. On one hand, the events of this ten year old girl's journey alone (surprise!) across the country is beyond preposterous, but if you put reality aside, a lot of it is interesting & touching. It offers a very realistic performance by a youngster named Mary Cate Williams who carries this little film about a young girl in search of her father, and seemingly just about any woman who would offer her motherly love, as she has no parents and comes from a very troubled upbringing making her both way older, wiser and hard than her number of years on earth would normally allow. It's a difficult film to rate. On one hand it's touching, but on the other, it's unbelievable. The way the film is presented (backflashes near the end of the film to previously shown scenes with the friend no longer in the shot), I don't think viewers were supposed to know in advance that her friend was not real, so shame on IMDB for revealing that in their description. I'm glad I didn't read it. BTW, the sound quality is awful.

At first I was kind of reluctant to watch an hour and a half during movie about two ten year old girls. But the film pretty much captivated me right from the start. Mainly due to it's really nice paced dreamy but realistic filming, ànd the heartwarming solid acting of the two starring roles. In contrast to their ages, their performance showed real friendship, persistence through willpower and maturity so incredibly well I could hardly believe it.

The story too was very well written. It was able to show realism parallel to symbolism without disturbing, no even strenghtening the main theme line.

During the movie, the acting and story increase to build a symbiotic relationship and keep lifting one and other to a higher level, and create such a strong final outcome.

Most definitly worth watching.

If you like this movie, be sure to check out 'The Dynamiter' as well..