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.