Plot: Carl Nargle, Vermont’s #1 public television painter is convinced he has it all: a signature perm, custom van, and fans hanging on his every stroke… until a younger, better artist steals everything (and everyone) Carl loves.
Review: When the first photos of Owen Wilson as Carl Nargle hit the internet, I knew that Paint was a movie I needed to see. The trailer made the movie out to be a quirky comedy in the vein of Wes Anderson’s films, and the finished product is not far off of that mark. With a sweet demeanor and a solid cast of comedic actors, Paint is very much like the art the main characters create in the film: nice but also very generic. There is nothing inherently wrong with Britt McAdams’s film. Still, it never embraces the oddity of the subject matter enough to make it stand out from the countless other Royal Tenenbaums-inspired movies released over the last twenty years. With a solid cast of familiar supporting players, including Michaela Watkins, Wendy McLendon-Covey, Stephen Root, and Ciara Renee, Paint has a unique concept but a rather formulaic execution.
Paint was featured on the Black List of unproduced screenplays back in 2010. Writer/director Britt McAdams spent the last decade writing for television and comedic shorts before finally producing his screenplay, thanks to IFC Films. While the film boasts familiar faces like Wendi McLendon-Covey, Michaela Watkins, and Stephen Root, Paint is squarely focused on Owen Wilson. The film draws heavily on the look and mannerisms of Bob Ross, whose public television series became a pop culture stalwart through the 1980s and 1990s. While Ross’ trademark hairstyle and soft speaking voice have remained etched into the zeitgeist even thirty years after his passing, Owen Wilson’s Carl Nargle performance is not an impression of the Joy of Painting host. Wilson plays Carl Nargle as a local celebrity in Vermont, surrounded by a fanbase that views him like a Hollywood icon. The balance of Carl’s personal and professional life comes to a head when he is presented with a rival painter, Ambrosia (Ciara Renee).
There were multiple directions that Paint could have gone and McAdams attempts to pursue quite a few. While the film clocks in at just about ninety-five minutes, it crams in many narrative threads that do not all work out in the end. The anachronistic look of Carl’s hairstyle and clothing, as well as the dated technology used at the Vermont PBS station, puts 1970s style into a contemporary story. The flashback-heavy first half of the film sets up Carl as something of a lothario and his fans as starry-eyed followers. The story then shifts into a rivalry between Carl and Ambrosia that has echoes of Rushmore, a Wes Anderson film that Owen Wilson co-wrote. At the expense of Vermont, there is a lot of fun through these sequences that mock the New England state and its old-fashioned quaintness. These moments are wedged between mildly sexual jokes that mostly miss the mark. By the forty-minute mark, Paint had exhausted so many plot directions that I was unsure where it was headed.
It is not until the film’s second half that Paint finds its stride. While Michaela Watkins is excellent throughout as Carls’ first love, Katherine, and Stephen Root delivers as ill-equipped station manager Tony, Ciara Renee as Ambrosia shines the most aside from Owen Wilson. But Ambrosia is underused throughout this film, which begins to show when the story stops playing cute and explains why Carl is the way he is. Owen Wilson’s impression of Bob Ross begins to mellow as he stops playing Carl as a character, making him feel more like a person. There are still weird moments that pepper the back half of Paint, but they feel more organic to the plot and benefit from Owen Wilson toning things down. Had this movie been made by Wes Anderson, Carl Nargle would have been a perfect part for Bill Murray. Wilson’s performance is sometimes too quiet and mellow, rarely building enough energy to make his growth worth investing in.
Creatively, Paint desperately wants to be a quirky indie comedy, but never truly is all that funny. There are moments that had me smiling as I watched, especially when tied to the fervent fans that surround Carl, but the jokes are repeated to a point where they quickly become tired. Brit McAdams sets up a lot of jokes that require you to invest in this surreal world where everyone watches PBS as if it were primetime network television, but then the joke gets dropped as if that was never the case. Had this strange world been invested in, like in movies like Napoleon Dynamite, the jokes may have worked better. Still, because the logic of reality and the logic of Paint weave in and out of one another, it is difficult to know when we are laughing at these characters versus when we are laughing with them.
With a scene in the final twenty minutes almost a remake of a similar sequence in The Royal Tenenbaums, Paint struggles to be anything but an homage to Wes Anderson’s films. But maybe the fact that Brit McAdams has created a paint-by-numbers film styled after Anderson’s work is what this film needed to be to tell the tale of a man who wants to be an artist and never creates anything with true emotion. I liked Paint and enjoyed watching it, but the novelty of Owen Wilson’s Bob Ross doppelganger wears off quickly, and the movie lacks consistency. In the end, this movie is very much like the art that Carl Nargle paints through the film: nice, sweet, but ultimately forgettable. This is not a bad movie, but it could have used better focus and more energy.
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