As I entered the AMC Boston Common to see Paint, I ran into my fellow Hassle critic Kyle Amato on his way in to see The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Kyle asked me what movie I was seeing. “Paint,” I said. When Kyle looked at me blankly, I expanded, “The Owen Wilson Bob Ross movie.” Kyle responded, “I saw something about that, but I’m not sure I understand what it is.” Having now seen it, I’m still not quite sure I understand what Paint is, and I’m not positive the filmmakers do either.
Wilson plays Carl Nargle, host of a Joy of Painting-esque DIY show on Burlington Public Television. Nargle is the station’s primary ratings draw, despite the fact that he exclusively paints pictures of Mount Mansfield from different angles; his lush afro and gentle demeanor make him the darling of the nursing home set, as well as a revolving cast of female production assistants who he invites to the back of his airbrushed van (named “Vantastic”). Nargle’s perch is threatened, however, when his boss (Stephen Root) decides to expand the program with a second painter, the young and charismatic Ambrosia (Ciara Renée). Ambrosia’s paintings are more idiosyncratic than Carl’s (a UFO vomiting blood onto a tree stump, for example), but her energy is infectious, and soon Carl finds himself threatened with a career teaching bored art students at the community college. With his career on the downslope and his love life on the rocks, Carl Nargle is forced to look within himself to find his own “special place.”
Paint feels like a throwback to the “character comedies” of the early 2000s– half-remembered larks like Corky Romano and Joe Dirt and Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo– raunchy, gimmicky farces which seemed to be adapted from non-existent SNL sketches. But with its gentle rhythms and warm, ‘70s-toned hues, Paint also appears to be aiming for the “nicecore” comedy of Ted Lasso or Parks and Recreation. These two strains of humor are not particularly compatible, and often seem like they’re battling for dominance. It’s never clear, for example, whether we’re meant to see Carl Nargle as a sweet, man-out-of-time naif or a sleazy, womanizing cad; that the film seems to want him to be both feels particularly out of step in 2023. Similarly, a date at a comedically quaint fondue restaurant called the Cheesepot Depot (pronounced as an almost-rhyme) ends in an interminable vomit/diarrhea sequence. The result is the worst of both worlds: sweetness which rings hollow, and gross-out gags which pull their punches.
The idea at the center of Paint, it must be said, is solid: Owen Wilson is funny, Bob Ross is funny, and the sight of Wilson channeling Ross is entertaining enough that one might be led to believe that the movie writes itself. But movies don’t write themselves– or at least, they shouldn’t. Too much of Paint relies on the improv-heavy, stammer-while-the-camera-runs style which has dominated American studio comedies for the past decade or two. This lack of structure, combined with the lackadaisical slide guitar score by Lyle Workman, gives the film a subdued energy which can only partly be attributed to the laid-back vibes of its protagonist. Even in a climactic fire rescue scene, the film barely musters more than an amble.
Paint is so slight, in fact, that I almost have trouble being mad at it, and I suppose it is amusing enough if you’re just looking for a way to pass an afternoon. Wilson is fun to watch in his ‘70s PBS drag and unwavering whisper; in one of the film’s better runners, characters regularly have to ask, “Are you yelling at me right now?” I laughed out loud at a sight gag in which a character deploys one of Carl’s paintings as cover while hiding in the forest. And the final joke, inserted as a mid-credits scene, is genuinely inspired– enough so that I wish more of the film was retrofitted to lead up to it. If all you’re looking for in a film is a few reasonably sized chuckles, I suppose Paint is good enough.
But it doesn’t have to be good enough, is the thing. Consider Stuart Saves His Family, a vehicle for Al Franken’s similarly soft-spoken SNL character Stuart Smalley, in which Franken and director Harold Ramis offered not only well-crafted jokes, but also honest-to-god drama and pathos. Just because a comedy can coast on a nutty premise doesn’t mean we, as viewers, should settle for that. There are any number of interesting directions Paint could have traveled: a throwback bad-taste romp; a whimsical fantasia in the vein of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure; even a sly commentary on retrograde icons in the age of #MeToo. Frustratingly, it chooses none of them, and remains just as timid and inert as Carl Nargle himself. If only Paint had followed the lead of its primary inspiration, and risked making a few happy accidents of its own.
Paint
2023
dir. Brit McAdams
96 min.
Opens Friday, 4/7 @ Kendall Square Cinema and AMC Boston Common
