Despite a fun premise that tries to bring a Bob Ross-style character to life, the film falls flat.
(Bloomberg) — For the first half of the movie Paint, I couldn’t figure out why everything seemed so familiar. It wasn’t that it was set in Vermont, where I’m from, and it wasn’t the fact that it’s a movie ostensibly about art, which I write about. It was, I realized, because I’d seen a better version before: I was watching a low-budget remake of Will Ferrell’s 2004 comedy Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.
The setup—a local TV prima donna is challenged by a smarter, more talented woman and has a childlike unraveling—is exactly the same, as is his redemption at the hands of his oppressor. The only difference is that Anchorman was very funny, while Paint is not.
Written and directed by Brit McAdams and co-produced by art collector Peter Brant, Paint chronicles the rise and fall and rise again of Carl Nargle (Owen Wilson), a Bob Ross-style painter who has a celebrated, hour-long segment on Vermont’s public TV channel. Murmuring in Wilson’s signature, smirking drawl, he smokes a pipe while lovingly describing the trees, rivers and mountains of his home state, finishing his remarkably bad paintings with a daub and a flourish.
Nargle has been painting onscreen for decades. He has a devoted fanbase—nursing home residents beam at their screens as he paints, as do good old boys watching at a bar—and a devoted staff. Women at the TV station compete to do him favors, falling over one another to carry his paintings from the studio to his ancient van. (License plate: “PAINTR.”) The only person seemingly immune to his charms is station employee Katherine (Michaela Watkins), who, we learn, was once and perhaps still is Nargle’s great love.
Soon enough, this Green Mountain paradise (filmed in Central New York!), has an intruder in the form of Ambrosia (Ciara Renée), a telegenic interloper brought in to juice the station’s viewership. Not only is Ambrosia bright, enthusiastic, young and attractive, she’s also, to Nargle’s horror, a better artist. Ambrosia, a free spirit, paints such things as a spaceship pouring blood on a tree stump (your guess is as good as mine), and is willing to create not one but two images in her one-hour slot. Talk about virtuosity.
The indignities begin to pile up as Ambrosia’s fame grows. Female staffers’ ardor for Nargle cools. The TV station’s new tote bags feature Ambrosia instead of his smiling face. Eventually Nargle is pushed off the air altogether, forced instead to teach art at the University of Vermont, which seems like a pretty great gig to me. He takes it hard, though, and spirals out of control, which in this case entails sulking and trying his hand at abstract painting.
Wilson’s commitment to the role seems to begin and end with his permed wig. Watkins, a naturally charismatic comedian and actor, does her best, although she’s not given much to work with. Everyone else, including a talented supporting cast (notably, Wendi Mclendon-Covey and Stephen Root, who play station employees) are given even less.
In theory, Paint is a movie about male ego and the ways it needs to be soothed, particularly when it’s attached to mediocre talent. In practice, it doesn’t land. Nargle, almost pathologically low key and kind, is meant to be likable. At his most furious, his voice is still soft and encouraging. But even if he’s not a jerk, Nargle is a serial womanizer who, when accused of being sexist, defends himself by saying “I opened their car doors, picked up every check and always carried the big suitcases.”
If there were more jokes, Paint’s many unexamined issues might be overlooked. As it stands, the final product is desperately in need of some serious touch-ups.
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