In the film, 19-year-old Mercer (Pucci) steals a stranger's car to embark on a road trip to find his estranged brother and tell him that their mother has died.

Singer and guitarist M. Ward provided most of the music for the film, complemented by songs from The Black Keys, Elliott Smith, The Replacements, and Animal Collective.

One ordinary day, 19-year-old Mercer White steals a Volvo station wagon from a car wash, and leaves Eugene, Oregon to find his estranged half-brother Arlen, who is unaware that their mother has recently died.

Mercer travels to a bohemian pottery-making commune in Shelter Cove, California where Arlen once lived, but learns that he moved to Reno, Nevada.

[2] Within six months of the script's completion, producer Lucy Barzun Donnelly had raised the entire budget of the film without any actors attached at the time.

[2] Jena Malone signed on to portray Joely because she "loved the script" and was keen to play "a woman on the cusp of learning to toy with her [...] sexual manipulation";[4] she only later learned that Hynes had written the role with her in mind, having previously worked with her on the short film Al as in Al.[5] Hynes said that Zooey Deschanel, Maura Tierney, and Bill Duke each joined the cast because they "read [the script] and really liked it".

[8] Hynes called the filming "a high-wire act the whole way", and said that one of the biggest challenges was transporting the crew of 40 from Oregon to Mexico, sometimes changing locations twice a day with few hours of daylight.

He also used "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" by novelty singer Corn Mo at the insistence of Nick Offerman, who plays three minor roles in the film.

The Portland Youth Jazz Orchestra All Stars plays Ward's "One Life Away" as an "old-timey instrumental" for one of Mercer's dreams, an homage to a dancing sequence seen in Jean-Luc Godard's 1964 film Bande à part.

[11] For the closing credits, Ward and Zooey Deschanel recorded a duet cover of "When I Get to the Border" from Richard and Linda Thompson's 1974 album I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight.

[19] Peace Arch Entertainment bought the film's distribution rights and it was given a limited release on June 6, 2008, in selective theatres in New York City, Santa Monica and Irvine, California, and Portland, Oregon.

[22] The region 1 disc includes an audio commentary with Martin Hynes, a "20 Questions" featurette with the cast and crew, a voucher for the download of a She & Him song, and a digital copy of the film for use with portable video players.

[25] Stephen Holden of The New York Times believed that "Much of the dialogue is so quirky it sounds overheard instead of scripted" and called the cast "correspondingly spontaneous".

[26] New York magazine's chief film critic David Edelstein praised Hynes' "talent for deadpan jaw-droppers that aren't self-consciously quirky", and thought that "In The Go-Getter, filmmaking itself feels like Manifest Destiny.

"[27] Todd McCarthy, writing for Variety, was impressed by Pucci's performance and Shah's cinematography, calling the film "an unusually fresh-feeling indie with a nice sense of style".

[29] New York Daily News critic Elizabeth Weitzman called Pucci "one of the best, and most overlooked, young actors around" and giving the film 4 out of 5 stars.

The Los Angeles Times' Carina Chocano felt that "despite flashes of genuine emotion [The Go-Getter] eventually succumbs to its own tweeness" and that the "moments of beauty" were outweighed by "the mannered dialogue and hamstrung performances".

[31] Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly graded the film as a C, saying that it "travels, but it doesn't go anywhere" and likening Pucci to "a wan, passive Johnny Depp".

[32] The Hollywood Reporter critic Frank Scheck praised the film's "appealing performances, sun-dappled cinematography and occasional witty dialogue", but thought that it was "contrived and derivative" and "a little too pleased with itself".

[34] Gabriel Wilder of The Sydney Morning Herald felt that it was "hard to maintain interest in [Mercer's] plight" because of Pucci's underacting and thought that "the script isn't so much quirky as incomplete", referring to the film's ending.