Review: ‘Paint’ has a brush with greatness by mixing colorful comedy, heart and Owen Wilson
The soft-shell masculinity Owen Wilson sells so well gets a solid workout in the goofball charmer “Paint,†about a beloved PBS art show personality sporting a nimbus of sensitive curls, the denim magnetism of a troubadour, and a healthy belief in his staying power.
Writer-director Brit McAdams’ debut feature takes the readily spoofable Bob Ross-ian allure of a honey-voiced, majestically permed instructor seducing viewers with his therapeutic landscapes, and gives it a gentle nudge into “Anchorman†territory. Not in the kind of over-the-top breakdowns Will Ferrell made into outrageously funny set pieces, but more the comically rich scenario of an overly confident man coming to grips with a changing world, and his own unaddressed insecurities.
With his pipe, paintbrush and you-can-do-it platitudes, Wilson’s whisper-voiced Carl Nargle is Burlington, Vermont’s big fish in a small — but picturesque — pond, turning cozy colors, calming vibes, and nature scenes into hypnotic daytime television for his followers, a demographic neatly summed up in reaction montages as eager hobbyists, enraptured seniors and lonely barflies. There’s also, based on the swooning attention he gets off-camera, plenty of smitten women ready to be invited into his customized van for a more personal kind of brushstroke. (The crack trio of Lusia Strus, Wendi McLendon-Covey and Lucy Freyer provides many choicely funny moments in this category of team player.)
Less impressed with Carl these days, however, is his nervous station manager Tony (Stephen Root), struggling to counter faltering ratings, and his producer and ex-girlfriend Katherine (Michaela Watkins), the underappreciated partner behind his two decades of broadcast success, ready to leave Carl and Burlington behind. But not before, as a parting shot to help the station — and maybe deliberately rattle Carl — she hires a lively young female artist named Ambrosia (Ciara Renée) to host her own painting show right after his.
When Ambrosia’s popularity and talent — even her seduction skills — begin to eclipse Carl’s, however, it sends the old lion into a self-absorbed tailspin, exposing not only the well-upholstered chauvinism undergirding his easy-breezy appeal (the kind that sees opening the door for women as the height of respect) but also a nagging self-doubt about his worth as an artist.
Had “Paint†settled for a litany of jokes involving chowder bread bowls, CB radios and public television culture, its snickery zing would have probably played like little more than a drawn-out sketch. But McAdams finds enough heart and intelligence in the themes of personal expression and equitable opportunity animating his comedy to spur a rounder laugh from the more absurd elements, and a chance for the rock-solid cast to not seem like merely figures in a funhouse. Even the nostalgic needle drops on the adult contemporary-infused soundtrack (including Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind†and Dolly Parton’s “Coat of Many Colorsâ€) occasionally tip toward a curious emotional resonance once they get their due as a spark-of-recognition chuckle.
This movie’s most identifiable musicality, of course, is Wilson’s patented lo-fi lilt, which McAdams treats like a comedy orchestra’s first chair, able to soothe with hilarious self-assurance one minute and be just as funny betraying confused and stupid hurt the next. Faced with a bolting girlfriend’s declaration that her Uber is here, he can make “I don’t know what that is†sound like a mini-epic of pity-me victimhood.
Carl is a great middle-aged role for the eccentric star’s well-seasoned gifts. And while Watkins has countless times proved her oddball bona fides in comedies, a more straight-ahead, reactive role like Katherine reminds us that she fits in anywhere — in this case, adding the right shades of melancholy and deadpan frustration to the movie’s canvas of quirk. “Paint†may ultimately be just modestly amusing, but at least it understands that a palette of well-blended tones has a better chance of earning our laughs than the one-color-fits-all kind.
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