Mellow Fellow Owen Wilson Channels Bob Ross in ‘Paint’

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Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – The newly released “Paint” film offers an amiable enough premise that’s amusing in a two minute trailer, but entirely out of gas 20 minutes into the story, and then plods around for a whole other hour. While it’s hard to hate it, but I don’t think my time was very well spent either.

Owen Wilson stars as Carl Nargle, the host of a popular daytime painting show on PBS station in Vermont. He’s the tiny station’s biggest star, and acts like an entitled 1970’s rock star … back when mellow hairy dudes were cool variety, only now with a staff of now middle aged groupies. Chief among them is the Nargle’s former flame, Katherine (Michaela Watkins.) She effectively runs the station, and has watched the permed painter take thousands of viewers to his “special little place,” while still nursing some old breakup wounds.

Paint
Photo credit: IFC Films

That “place” is a custom van complete with sofa bed. He’s used to having a staff of adoring fans fawning over him, and wooing his next love affair with a trip to the local fondue place. But deep down, he wants to be a respected artist and get his painting into the Burlington Museum of Art. This all changes when he’s asked to do another painting show and turns the station down. So a beleaguered PBS executive – portrayed by Stephen Root – hires a younger painter Ambrosia (Ciara Renée) to fill the companion time slot. Soon she becomes the station’s undisputed white hot star, forcing Nargle to face the prospect of being left permanently in the past.

Wilson is amusing enough, channeling the look and the soothing purr of the late PBS kitsch icon Bob Ross. There are some exceedingly mild tee-hee kind of jokes about his mellow vibe, for example when Carl Nargle raises his voice to just barely above an audible whisper, staffers ask him why he’s shouting. However, there’s only one gear to this movie and this performance and once the premise and tone is established, the film doesn’t know where to go.

Afterward, all that is left is the exceedingly well-worn cliches of the star’s rise and fall. I feel like if writer/director Brit McAdams had wanted to he could have really used this battle of the PBS stars as an avenue to explore more flights of fancy, and find some real memorable moments. However there’s no variation in any of it, so it just keeps hitting the same notes over and over and over again.

Carl (Owen Wilson) is the Centerpiece in ‘Paint’
Photo credit: IFC FILMS

One other minor quibble I have is that the film doesn’t establish a consistent time and place. The design of the film has an overwhelming very early 1980’s vibe, full of antiquated technology (the station uses graphics boards not unlike those old SCTV Gerry Todd music video sketches), not to mention that custom van, but it ostensibly takes place in the 21st century. There are some one off half hearted jokes about Nargle not knowing what an Uber is, and being unable to work the voicemail in a cell phone, but they just kind of lay there and don’t produce any laughs.

“Paint” is a lazy stroll down a country road of comedy that never goes anywhere special. As I said at the top as a premise I found it hard to hate, but after it was over I don’t think my time was very well spent either.

By SPIKE WALTERS Contributor HollywoodChicago.com [email protected]