Bob's Cinema Diary: April 7, 2023: 'Paint' and 'One True Loves'

 

Paint

   Carl Nargle is a star at a small Vermont PBS station. His Afro-style doo, trademark pipe, and hushed delivery have turned his show, Paint, into a narcotic for those who want to be reassured that the world is OK. If you think this sounds a bit like PBS's Bob Ross, you'd be right -- sort of

  But Paint, the movie in which Owen Wilson plays a small-town celebrity who's losing his mojo, is less a fictionalized portrait of Ross than an ineffectual comedy about a deluded man who's losing his meager helping of fame. 

  The station where Carl works hires another painter (Ciara Renee) to bring new life to its lineup. Renee's Ambrosia proves popular with younger viewers; her painting is riskier than Carl's, although she doesn't seem to be particularly gifted, either.

   In sone ways Paint is a comedy of incompetence, bolstered by a  station manager (Steven Root) who appears not to know what he's doing. 

   In addition, Carl has relationship problems. A womanizer who works out of the back of his van, Carl can't be relied on for fidelity. 

   Michaela Watkins plays an assistant manager who once was Carl's great love. Lucy Freyer portrays a young station hand who falls for Carl but eventually realizes that his soft-spoken voice -- applied like a delicate brush stroke -- masks his narcissism and laziness. Carl repeatedly paints one scene, a Vermont mountain.

   Wilson inhabits the character with apparent ease, but the satire isn't sharp enough and writer/director Brit McAdams doesn't comment on the way that Nargle might be contributing to a warped understanding of artistic endeavor. 

    In all, the movie has much the same effect as one of Nargle's shows. It calms without ever finding anything much to say.

One True Loves

One True Loves adapts a novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid for the screen. Director Andy Fickman centers the story on Emma (Phillipa Soo), a happily married travel writer. Emma hopscotches the world with her husband (Luke Bracey). The screenplay’s major twist occurs when Bracey's Jesse, a photographer by trade, accepts an assignment at a remote location. He doesn't return and is assumed to have died in a helicopter crash. Emma grieves but eventually moves on with her life. She becomes engaged to steady Sam (Simu Liu), a music teacher who has zero wanderlust. By this time, Emma has taken over her parents' bookstore and has discovered the joys of sedentary living in small-town Massachusetts. But a major snag arises. Jesse somehow survived the crash, spent the last four years on a desert island, and now has returned. What's Emma to do? Marry Sam? Resume her relationship with Jesse? The screenplay eventually eases the way for Emma's decision, but en route, it includes sappy scenes, a few lame attempts at drama, and at least one scene in which Sam inappropriately shares his problems with his students. It's meant to be funny, but like many of the movie's other attempts at humor, it misses. OK, many movies rely on some level of contrivance, but in this case, contrivance crushes credibility.

Brittany runs, but there’s a bit more to it

Some weeks before I saw it, I recall reading that Brittany Runs a Marathon might be the sleeper hit of summer. Well, we’re on the cusp of fall and the movie is just now making its way around the country and I have no idea whether it will be a breakthrough hit.

Still, Brittany has plenty to recommend it. Not the least of the movie’s triumphs revolves around the performance of Jillian Bell, who plays the title character, a 27-year-old overweight New York woman whose doctor tells her that it’s time to shed 50 pounds. Her excesses -- food, alcohol, and hard-partying -- have put her on an early death track.

Initially resistant, the dissolute Brittany decides to become a runner. Given Brittany’s penchant for excess, it's not surprising that she becomes an addicted runner who plans to enter the grueling New York City marathon. She begins to lose weight.

Writer/director Paul Downs Collaizo primes the audience for a feel-good comedy about an acerbic, frequently dislikable woman, who changes her life so that she can become a beacon of self-transformation.

Thankfully, Collaizo follows a slightly different path. A complex character, Brittany takes herself and her running seriously but not everyone else does. As her roommate (Alice Lee) discovers, the reformed Brittany isn’t nearly as much fun as she was when she was drinking, staying out all night, and strafing others with sarcasm.

After Brittany gets crosswise with her roommate, she lands a job at an upscale Manhattan home, where she’s supposed to look after the vacationing owners’ dog. Lacking a place to stay, Brittany moves in and meets Jern (Utkarsh Ambudkar), an unashamed slacker who has taken the same house-minding job. He uses the home as his personal squat.

Brittany also acquires a support system for her running, notably a former neighbor (Michaela Watkins), a photographer who’s going through a tough divorce. Watkins character flirts with cliche, reminding us —- in case we didn’t already know — that a person’s surface seldom tells the whole story. Apparently, people who seem healthy and well-adjusted have problems, too.

Brittany also convinces a gay friend (Micah Stock) to join her running regimen. Kate Arrington portrays Brittany’s sister, who lives with her husband (Lil Rel Howery) in Brittany’s hometown, Philadelphia.

Bell can be funny and, in the movie’s final going, really annoying. That's because Brittany doesn’t deal with all the obstacles she faces with humility and grace. A scene in which she confronts and insults a heavy woman taps a little too deeply into Brittany's sour side.

Collaizo can't quite accommodate all the movie's tonal shifts (from hip comedy to serious drama) but he should be credited with trying to add some nuance to what could have been high-concept formula job: overweight woman sheds pounds, gain self-confidence and becomes a better person.

As it turns out, Brittany's greatest victory involves her realization that her weight and her capacity to love and be loved aren’t irrevocably linked. Fair enough, but I wondered whether such a conclusion might be a little too pat for a character who's smart and tough enough not to care whether her story has a spirit-lifting message.

'Brigsby Bear' and 'Dave Made A Maze'

It's unusual that two movies, both of which risk silliness and both of which achieve some success, open during the same week. But that's the case with Brigsby Bear and Dave Made A Maze, both of which arrive in Denver and presumably around the country this week.

Brigsby Bear, the more engaging of the two movies, tells the story of a young man who was kidnapped as an infant. Kyle Mooney plays James, a man who's freed from captivity after 25 years.

James wasn't physically abused by his kidnappers; instead, he was isolated from everyone else by two people (Mark Hammil and Jane Adams) who claimed to be his parents and who evidently told him that the world was too contaminated for him to venture beyond their well-sealed home.

During his years of captivity, James became totally absorbed in the world of Brigsby Bear, a TV show that he watches on videotapes which his faux father, who dons a gas mask when he leaves the family compound, brings home.

Clunky looking and amusingly amateurish, Brigsby Bear introduces James to a complex fantasy universe that encompasses a variety of different worlds and villains.

There's no reason why the now-grown James should continue his interest in something as child-centered as Brigsby Bear, a series that wouldn't cut it even during the less sophisticated 1970s.

But the totally isolated James no longer makes any distinction between Brigsby's world and his own.

The movie shifts gears when the local police -- led by an amiable detective (Greg Kinnear) -- liberate James. He's returned to his biological parents (Matt Walsh and Michaela Watkins. They try to bring James up to speed about a world that has passed him by.

When James's interest in Brigsby doesn't subside, his parents decide that he ought to see a therapist (Claire Danes). She tries -- without much success -- to convince James to abandon Brigsby and drop in on the "real" world once in a while.

But James persists, so much so that he and a new pal (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.) decide to continue making Brigsby Bear videos. James wants to fulfill the only destiny he can imagine, bringing the series to its conclusion.

James becomes author, filmmaker, and star (in a bear suit) of the Brigsby Bear show.

Look, all of this sounds a bit ridiculous, but director Dave McCary, working from a screenplay by Mooney and Kevin Costello, displays a light, sensitive touch that eschews ridicule, even as it examines the role fantasy plays in keeping James going.

McCary could have put a sneer on the movie's face, turning it into a kind of hip satire about the danger of losing oneself in pop-cultural fantasies. Instead, he has made a captivating charmer of a movie about a young man trying to negotiate a world he may never fully understand.

Dave Made A Maze takes a different tack with its silliness, introducing mild elements of horror and danger along with a healthy dose of 20something dislocation.

Annie (Meera Rohit Kumbhani) arrives home from a weekend trip to discover that her boyfriend Dave (Nick Thune) has erected a cardboard maze in their small living room.

The structure looks entirely wobbly and unsophisticated, a warren of boxes and smoking chimneys that might not withstand a strong wind.

From inside the maze, we hear Dave telling Annie that he's lost. He also makes the preposterous claim that the maze is much bigger on the inside than it appears when viewed from the outside.

Not knowing what to do, Annie asks for help from Dave's pal Gordon (Adam Busch). Others turn up, including a guy (James Urbaniak) who wants to make a documentary about the maze.

Eventually, Annie and company enter the maze, where they discover that Dave was right about the scale of the structure -- and also about its dangers. Booby traps lurk everywhere and a lethal Minotaur roams the premises.

Like Dave's maze, the movie adds creative, low-rent effects, some quite clever and most making inspired use of cardboard.

Dave Made A Maze ultimately wears out a thin premise. But at a swift 80-minutes, it proves more engaging than you'd think for a movie with a substantial number of cardboard sets.

A comedy finds its voice

"In a world ... "

Remember when it seemed as if every Hollywood trailer began with those three words.

They were delivered in deep, sonorous and often momentous tones by the late Don LaFontaine , the man who provided the voice-over narration for more than 5,000 trailers. LaFontaine's voice became instantly recognizable to a generation of moviegoers who knew its sound even if they didn't know the name of the man to whom it belonged.

The new comedy In a World -- a debut film from director and actress Lake Bell -- takes a witty, engaging look at the contemporary world of voice-overs. Bell immerses us in a little-known corner of show-business, centering her comedy on a young woman (played by Bell) who's trying to make her mark.

Funny without feeling compelled to put pedal to the comic metal, In A World reminds us that every sphere of human activity -- regardless of how obscure -- tends to produce a hierarchy, an absurd pecking order built on a foundation of rampant egotism.

Bell's Carol faces major psychological and social roadblocks. She's trying to break into a male-dominated field currently ruled by her father (Fred Melamed), a voice-over actor who has had a major career and an ego to match.

We meet Melamed's Sam in a scene in which he tells Carol that she'll have to move out of his house because his new, 31-year-old girlfriend (Alexandra Holden) will be moving in.

Melamed, whose immense shaggy body is exposed in scenes set in a steam bath, qualifies as one of the most unusual screen presences around. He appeared as overly solicitous home-wrecker Sy Ableman in the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man. Here, Melamed becomes a reigning pasha of the voice-over world, a man so full of himself he believes he can pass his mantle to a younger successor, an equally puffed-up voice actor named Gustav Werner (Ken Marino).

And, of course, Sam enunciates as if careful pronunciation were all that's needed to demonstrate an obvious superiority of character.

Once ejected from her father's home, Carol takes up residence with her sister Dani (Michaela Watkins). Dani lives in a small apartment with her husband (Rob Corddry), a film editor who works at home. Dani works as a concierge in a Los Angeles hotel.

Not only does Bell capture the highly competitive world of vocal acting, but she also has made a smart and funny comedy that includes characters who are colorful, a little odd and mostly good company.

Principal among these is Louis (Demetri Martin), an insecure sound engineer who helps Carol's career and who also has a crush on her.

The movie eventually begins to revolve around a highly sought after voice over job, the trailer for a quartet of movies called The Amazon Games. The promotional plan for Amazon Games calls for revival of the legendary phrase, "In a world."

Bell, who has played secondary roles in movies such as What Happens in Vegas and who has appeared in TV shows such as The Practice, demonstrates talent both before and behind the camera.

In so doing, she's accomplished something commendable: She's made a movie about people whose preoccupations often make them seem silly, but who still refuse to be confined by the rigid borders of caricature.